
atfy 



z 









VodoRY OF CONGRESS 

MR. 




Columbia Umbersittp 



The Modern Drama 

A Course of Forty Readings in European and 

American Drama beginning with Ibsen and 

continuing to the Present Day 



By Edgar White Burrill, A.M. 

Instructor in English, Extension Teaching, and 

Curator of the Dramatic Museum, Columbia University 

Director of the Drama League of America 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

NEW YORK 

I920 




Columbia ?Bmbergttp 

tn tfje Citp of JSeto gorfe 



The Modern Drama 

A Course of Forty Readings in European and 

American Drama beginning with Ibsen and 

continuing to the Present Day 



By Edgar White Burrill, A.M. 

Instructor in English, Extension Teaching, and 

Curator of the Dramatic Museum, Columbia University 

Director of the Drama League of America 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

NEW YORK 

I920 



PNnoi 

Copyright, 1920, by Department of Extension Teaching, Columbia University v 



J 



©CI.A56G598 



A COURSE IN MODERN DRAMA 



FOREWORD 

I. THE AIM OF THE COURSE 

This course is intended as an introduction to the dramatic 
literature of the last fifty years, with a rapid summary of the devel- 
opment of the drama in each of the leading countries of Europe and 
in America. It is not a course in play-writing, nor is it primarily 
a study of drama from the historical point of view. The aim is to 
acquaint the student with representative plays of the leading dram- 
atists of today and to sketch briefly the importance of their work 
as a whole. Students who wish to learn how to write plays are 
referred to the Composition courses given by the University and to 
such books on the subject of dramatic composition as William 
Archer's Playmaking. There are no prerequisites for this course 
except the ability to read English intelligently and to make the 
required reports. 

II. THE PLAN OF THE WORK 

The course is planned in forty lessons, two of which may be com- 
pleted each week, but according to the rules of the Home Study 
Department a student has a calendar year in which to complete a 
course. It is earnestly recommended, in order that the student may 
receive regular and systematic assistance, so far as the limitations 
and delays of correspondence will permit, that the student conform 
as nearly as possible to the twenty weeks' plan. 

The material to be considered has been divided into eight main 
groups, the drama of the Scandinavian countries being taken up 
first; Germany next, together with Austria, Hungary, and Holland; 
Russia and Poland; France and Belgium; Italy; Spain; Eng- 
land, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and finally America. In the 
first group are included the plays of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, 
and Icelandic writers; in the second, those written in German and 
Dutch; third, those in Russian; fourth, those in French; while the 
English group does not differentiate between those produced by 
English, Scotch, Welsh, or Irish writers except to pay some special 
heed to the playwrights of the Irish dramatic Renaissence, whose 
work constitutes an organic whole. An Irishman like Shaw, how- 

[3l 



ever, is treated with the English dramatists because his literary 
affiliations are not primarily native to Ireland. The work of Amer- 
ican dramatists is also separated from the British drama. 

The course will be conducted by means of discussion in the sylla- 
bus, by assignments of plays and of certain selections in the text- 
books, and by assignments for written work in the student's note- 
book and in papers due after every sixth lesson has been completed. 
Each lesson has been divided into four parts, marked A, B, C, and 
D. The first, A, contains assignments for required study. The 
second, B, contains assignments for optional study. Then follows 
a brief discussion of the particular material or play assigned for 
required study. The third, C, consists of questions on the required 
assignment, the answers to which are to be written in a notebook 
kept by the student but not forwarded to the instructor except at 
his request. These questions are for the purpose of guiding the 
student in his study, and are in the nature of a preliminary to the 
required papers. The fourth part of the lesson, D, consists first of 
questions for the papers based on the required reading, suggested 
under A, and second, of questions based on the optional reading, 
suggested under B. These papers are due after every sixth lesson, 
should be about 2000 words in length, and are expected to treat of 
some particular phase of a play or dramatist covered during that 
period. This essay must be specific, reflecting the personal obser- 
vations of the student on an aspect of the work which is both signifi- 
cant and definite. The questions under D of each lesson" indicate 
the kind of investigation and reaction that is desired, but the paper 
may not touch on any one of these particular phases at all, or it may 
combine several under an appropriate heading. These questions, 
unlike those for the notebook, under C, are primarily to stimulate 
further thought so that a suitable subject will be found about which 
to write; they are not intended to limit the field of the inquiry or 
the possibilities of individual research. The paper may indeed 
deal with other plays of the dramatists considered, or with dramat- 
ists whose work is not included in this outline. None of the optional 
reading or questions need be considered at all unless the student 
has time and so desires. 

III. METHOD OF CONDUCTING THE COURSE 

The work in the course will be conducted by correspondence. 
The student will be provided with the textbook and the required 

[4] 



plays. He will then do each lesson, write the answers to the ques- 
tions under section C in his notebook, which may be called for upon 
request of the instructor at any time, and write the theme that is 
due after every sixth lesson, six being required for the complete 
course. These themes the instructor will read and grade, returning 
them to the student, with a summarized comment. 

In beginning work on each lesson, the student should first read 
the required assignment, A, carefully and then whatever discussion 
occurs under section B. 

IV. DIRECTIONS FOR PAPERS 

(c) Write all exercises in ink. If you use a typewriter, type them. 

(b) Use theme paper 8 x io>£ inches; if theme is typed, paper of ordinary 
typewriter size. 

(c) Leave sufficient margins, at least i}4 inches at left if theme is writ- 
ten, I inch at each side if typed. 

(d) Send manuscripts flat or folded : do not roll. 

(e) Endorse manuscript as follows: 

i. Number of theme (I, II, III, IV, V, or VI). 

2. Title of theme. 

3. Name of student and address. 

4. Date. 

For example : 

I. Comparison of Gregers Werle with Rosmer. 
Josephine X. Doe, 248 Chestnut St., Ware , Mass. 
June 8, 1920. 

(/) Address all communications to Mr. Edgar W. Burrill, Home Study 
Courses, 301 University Hall, Columbia University, New York City. 

V. BOOKS USED IN THE COURSE 

1. Aspects of Modern Drama, F. W. Chandler, New York, 1 9 14. 

This book will be referred to by the name Chandler. 

2. Chief Contemporary Dramatists, T. H. Dickinson, Boston, 1915. 

Twenty plays are found in this volume, all of which are required to 
be read. Complete lists of the most important authors' plays may 
be found in the Appendix to this book, but much more complete 
bibliographical material is contained in Chandler. 
The plays included in this volume are as follows: 

Bjornson's Beyond Our Power (I) 

Strindberg's The Father 

Hauptmann's The Weavers 

[5) 



Sudermann's The Vale of Content 
Tchekhov's The Cherry Orchard 
Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande 
Brieux' The Red Robe 
Hervieu's Know Thyself 
Wilde's Lady Windermere' s Fan 
Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 
Jones' Michael and His Lost Angel 
Galsworthy's Strife 
Barker's The Madras House 
Yeats' The Hour-Glass 
Synge's Riders to the Sea 
Gregory's The Rising of the Moon 
Thomas' The Witching Hour 
Fitch's The Truth 
Mackaye's The Scarecrow 
Moody's The Great Divide 

3. Ibsen's A DolVs House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild 

Duck, The Lady from the Sea (all in the Everyman Edition), and 
The Master Builder (Baker). 

4. Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell (Huebsch) and RoseBernd (Huebsch). 

5. Sudermann's Magda (French). 

6. Rostand's Chantecler (Duffield). 

7. Shaw's Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, and 

Major Barbara (Brentano). 

8. Pinero's His House in Order (Baker). 

9. Galsworthy's Justice and The Pigeon (Scribners). 

10. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton (Scribners). 

11. Jones' The Liars (French). 

12. Fitch's The Girl with the Green Eyes (French). 

OPTIONAL 

The Modern Drama, Ludwig Lewisohn, New York, 19 15. 
Special attention paid to French, German, and English drama. 

The Student's Course in Literature, Volume 30 of The Warner Library, Uni- 
versity Edition, New York, 1917. This book has admirable summaries of 
the various literatures of the world, with sketches of the cultural back- 
grounds of the different countries. 

The Changing Drama, Archibald Henderson, New York, 1914. 
Excellent summaries of the changes in form, content, and general tenden- 
cies of the modern drama. 

Ibsen's Brand, Peer Gynt, Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler, John Gabriel Borkman, 
Little Eyolf, When We Dead Awaken. 

[61 



Bjornson's The Newly Married Couple, The Gauntlet, Beyond Human 
Might (II). 

Strindberg's Miss Julia, The Dream Play. 

Hauptmann's Before Dawn, Hannele, Drayman Henschel. 

Schnitzler's Anatol. Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes. Somerset Maugh- 
am's A Man of Honor. 

Gorki's The Night Refuge. Andreyev's To the Stars. 

Maeterlinck's The Blind, The Intruder, Interior {Home), The Blue Bird. 

Brieux' I he Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Maternity. 

Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, VAiglon. 

D'Annunz : o's Gioconda. Echegaray's The Great Galeoto. 

Pinero's Mid-Channel, The Thunderbolt. 

Jones' Mrs. Dane's Defense, The Divine Gift. 

Shaw's Widowers' Houses, The Devils Disciple, The Doctor's Dilemma. 

Ervine's Mixed Marriage. 

Sowerby's Rutherford and Son. 

Baker's Chains. 

Masefield's The Tragedy of Nan. 

Barker's Waste, The Voysey Inheritance. 

Yeats' Cathleen ni Hoolihan, Synge's In the Shadow of the Glen. Gregory's 
Spreading the News, The Travelling Man. 

Kennedy's The Servant in the House. Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor 
Back. 

Fitch's The City. Kenyon's Kindling. 

Phillips' Herod. 

Peabody's The Piper. 

Zangwill's The Melting Pot. 



[7] 



PART I 

General Introduction 

The European drama of today, like that of ancient Greece, 
evolved primarily from religious ceremonies, but instead of center- 
ing around the altar of the Hellenic god Dionysius, the medieval 
drama arose out of the services of the Roman Catholic Church. 
A certain lyric quality is common to both the primitive Greek and 
the medieval drama; it was, in fact, from the Doric dithyramb that 
Greek tragedy arose, while Christmas songs of praise and Easter 
hymns of rejoicing marked the early representations in medieval 
Europe of episodes from the life of Christ. The Chorus remained 
a constituent element in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and 
Euripides, and in the comedies of Aristophanes, while the Eliza- 
bethan drama, though it discarded the chorus, did make use of 
occasional lyric songs and of frequent soliloquies. The Greek 
drama strictly observed the three unities, limiting the action to a 
single locality, to a single day, and to a single story. The Elizabe- 
than drama, on the other hand, had a wide variety of scenes, the 
action might be spread over years, and there were often one or 
more sub-plots. It has been said that the Greek tragedy uses 
crisis action only, its entirety corresponding to an expanded Eliza- 
bethan fifth act. 

But the religious beliefs of the Greeks and the medieval Euro- 
peans furnish another marked constrast in the treatment of their 
subjects. The Greek idea of an external and irresistible Fate, 
which finds its most sublime expression in Sophocles' CEdipus the 
King, gave way under the influence of Christianity to a belief in 
man as a free agent, able to determine whither he should go. We 
find in the morality play, which grew up a little later than the mys- 
tery and miracle plays with their presentation of scenes from the 
lives of Bible characters or of saints, man represented most didacti- 
cally of all as a battleground for personified virtues and vices, but 
nevertheless able to choose at will which shall be his companions. 
Passing through a process of secularization, with influences from the 

[8] 



chronicle histories of the time and from the classics, the mystery play 
and the morality like Everyman developed at last into the full- 
fledged, robust drama of the Elizabethan age. The English drama 
of that time, indeed, both in quality and output, rose to the heights 
of ancient Greece, and in the work of Shakespeare it flowered into 
verse of a surpassing richness and beauty, while the late seventeenth 
century in France saw in Moliere probably the world's greatest 
writer of comedy. 

Until the time of Ibsen and his contemporaries, who brought the 
drama back to reality more drastically than ever before, no pre- 
eminent figure stands forth. But Frenchmen like Scribe and Sardou 
had carried to an extreme the symmetrical or "well-made" type of 
play, which depended upon mechanical dexterity in its craftsman- 
ship, and was so built upon accident as to be remote from actuality. 
They devoted a first act to sometimes tedious exposition, following 
it with an apparent solution which turned out to have been erron- 
eous, and managed to keep up a certain suspense until the final 
denouement in the last act. The emphasis upon structure went to 
such rationalistic extremes that these playwrights seem to have 
spent their energies in making it plain to the audience for what pur- 
pose every character entered or left the stage, even if it were only 
to pick up a hat or an umbrella. Upon the heels of this era of glib 
technique but of fundamental artificiality, Ibsen and his contempo- 
raries came, with their contribution of a new intellectual content. 

With the influence of such powerful playwrights as Ibsen and 
Hauptmann was associated also a new birth of freedom for the stage 
itself. The conventions of the past were rapidly replaced with a 
new technique which would not tolerate a whole act of exposition, 
nor depend upon the aside and the soliloquy for the revelation of 
character. Better lighting facilities gave opportunity for more 
subtle shades of expression; long speeches were replaced by the 
broken sentences of real life; the actor no longer needed to come 
down to the edge of the platform stage and declaim to the audience : 
he must henceforth remain within the picture frame of the proscen- 
ium arch. Free Theatre movements sprang into being in most of 
the countries of Europe except Italy and Russia. In Paris first of 
all, Andre Antoine opened his Theatre Libre in 1887 with natural- 
istic plays from Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hauptmann, and others. In Berlin 
in 1889 the Freie Btihne under Otto Brahm was equally successful, 
while the Independent Theatre of London in 1891 paralleled similar 

[9] 



attempts in Vienna and Munich towards truth and freedom on the 
stage. Realistic interpretation and representation of life was every- 
where the fashion at first, but symbolism and romance were not 
long barred, even in the works of the very men who had so vigor- 
ously taken the lead in reflecting actuality and sordidness. A dec- 
ade later other repertory theatres were springing up in Dublin, 
Glasgow, Manchester, London, Chicago, and New York, until today 
experiments of all sorts are in vogue, from Stuart Walker's movable 
Portmanteau Theatre to the elaborate and highly successful Art 
Theatre of Nemirovitch-Dantschenko at Moscow. In the develop- 
ment of the contributory arts of the theatre, the perfection of 
scene-painting, of lighting effects, costuming, assemblage of harmon- 
ious properties, and the like, credit must be given to such experts as 
Craig, Reinhardt, Barker, Bakst, Stanislawsky, Ordynski, Belasco, 
Urban, and Robert Jones, who are of only secondary importance 
to the men who wrote the plays which they have so notably staged. 
Yet with all this wealth of assistance and this freedom from tradi- 
tion, we find dramatists like Ibsen and Shaw frequently reverting 
to the classic unities of one place, one time (often the actual acting 
time), and one action, while the one-act play has flourished every- 
where, under the skilful tutelage of such masters as Maeterlinck, 
Strindberg, Sudermann, Schnitzler, Barrie and the Irish dramatists. 

On the whole, the drama of the last half century is characterized 
chiefly by its emphasis upon ideas, often subordinating the emo- 
tional appeal to the intellectual content. It reflects the changing 
standards of life, brought about by new scientific and humanitarian 
points of view. It is concerned frequently with specific problems, 
and occasionally even with obvious propaganda. The portrayal of 
life for its own sake is often abandoned in the effort to instruct, to 
reform, and to direct, rather than simply to amuse. There are some 
reactions from this trend, as in the Irish drama and in the romantic 
plays of several of the major dramatists themselves. 

Fate is still an element in the action, but now in the guise of 
heredity and environment rather than as a theological concept, as 
with the Greeks, while the self-originating will in conflict with some 
champion of the immutable moral laws of the universe, as with the 
Elizabethans, has given way to a new idea of conflict: the individ- 
ual's struggle, often unavailing, with inherited predispositions, 
social circumstances beyond his control, and the particular histori- 
cal moment into which he is born. All volition is seen to be bounded 

[io] 



by preliminary and contributing causes. The emphasis in recent 
drama is therefore transferred from the individuals who defy right- 
eousness to representatives of mankind who endeavor to reform 
general evils, ameliorate their own outward conditions, and remedy 
the abuses of organized and institutionalized society. The drama 
is part of the spontaneous and humanitarian effort to mitigate the 
injustices of life, especially among people who suffer under the 
imperfections of civilization. This economic, evolutionary, and 
sociological trend of the drama is most in evidence in such writers 
as Ibsen, Shaw, Hauptmann, Galsworthy, and Brieux, who feel 
that society as a whole is responsible for the adverse conditions 
which affect its individuals. Frequently there is no final reconcili- 
ation or adjustment, but a protest against cumulative injustice, 
which, it is felt, can be remedied for the future only by ourselves, in 
efficient and far-sighted co-operation now. 

While a play has in the main been correctly defined as a represen- 
tation, by actors, on a stage, before an audience, of a struggle be- 
tween individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than by 
intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action, yet today some 
exceptions must be taken to this definition. We have a right to 
exclude at once, of course, the so-called "closet dramas,"which are 
better adapted to be read than to be performed, because of their 
violation, or negligence, of the rules of dramatic technique. But 
the early static plays of Maeterlinck and the passive pictures of 
life of the Russian dramatists do not exhibit a well defined struggle 
between human wills, and yet may be effectively performed by ac- 
tors, on a stage before an audience. Moreover, the thesis plays of 
Brieux and Hervieu are motivated rather by intellect than by emo- 
tion, and yet have been very successful upon the stage. Further, 
the struggle between individual human wills is lost sight of com- 
pletely in such a play as The Weavers, where the conflict is rather 
between classes or groups of individuals. We may, indeed, be 
forced to the admission that any "play" that plays is a play, but 
nevertheless the element of struggle will usually be found to be a 
necessary prerequisite for success. The qualities that make a play 
distinctively actable, however, may have nothing in common with 
the demands of literature. Pantomime, whether upon the film or 
upon the three-dimensional stage, excludes the possibility of litera- 
ture, and yet is fundamentally dramatic. Theatrical effectiveness 
may exist quite independent of any mastery of structure, charm of 

["J 



style, or subtlety of characterization, which go to make up litera- 
ture. Yet the plays here studied, for the most part exhibit not only 
that indispensable quality of theatrical effectiveness but also in 
some degree that more permanent elevation of manner which makes 
for literature, even if they fall far short of that combination of 
powers that makes Shakespeare's best plays masterpieces for all 
time. These plays, at least, have all stood the essential test of pro- 
duction upon the stage, a test which the more literary efforts of 
poets like Tennyson and Browning generally failed to meet. 



[12] 



PART II 

Scandinavian Drama 

The drama of Scandinavia has its roots in the native Eddas and 
Sagas which form so rich a background of culture for Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark and Iceland. Ibsen, Bjornson, and Strindberg 
drew their inspiration, if not their actual subject matter at first, 
from the deep wells of this pagan Norse literature. Something of 
the pithy brevity, directness, naturalness, and vivid imagery of the 
Eddas and Sagas characterize even their later work, but all three 
began with the attempt to transcribe dramatically some of the 
ancient legends and histories. The two sides of the Northern chart 
acter are reflected in Ibsen and Bjornson themselves, as well as in 
Ibsen's Skule and Haakon in The Pretenders, and in his Brand and 
Peer Gynt, one brooding, reflective, and Hamlet-like, the other a 
man of action, genial, and self-confident. 

Ibsen, Bjornson, and Strindberg are the three outstanding figures 
in the Scandinavian drama and will receive detailed treatment 
later. In Denmark, brief mention should be made of Oehlenschlager, 
the Germanized Dane whose romantic plays exerted such a strong 
influence upon Ibsen's early work, and Hjalmar Bergstrom, the 
leader of the younger dramatists of Denmark, whose Ida's Wedding 
and Karen Borneman deal with the rights of women, while Lynggaard 
and Company effectively shows the conflict of capital and labor. 
In Iceland, Johann Sigurjonsson shows more originality, depicting 
the elemental emotions of primitive life in such plays as Hraun Farm 
and Eyvind of the Hills. Another Danish dramatist, Holger Drach- 
mann (i 846-1 908), who wrote many poems and stories as well as 
plays, one of the last of which was a lyrical drama, Halfred Van- 
draadskjald (1900), produced an opera, Once upon a Time, founded 
on Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The Swineherd. Among the 
Swedish dramatists should be mentioned also Anne Charlotte 
Leffler Edgren (1 849-1 892), whose plays for the most part are con- 
cerned with woman's struggle with her conventional environment, 
The Actress (1873) running for an entire winter at Stockholm, but 

[13] 



A Rescuing Angel (1891) being her greatest success. In Norway the 
dramatic work of the novelist Jonas Lie (1 833-1908), deserves 
comment, especially his comedy, Merry Women (1894) and a fairy 
play, Lindelin (1897), while Hjalmar Boyesen's (1848-1895) 
Alpine Roses was successfully acted in New York in 1883. 

Henrik Ibsen (1 828-1 906) marks most conveniently the begin- 
ning of the modern movement in the drama. Himself the most 
potent force in the last half century of drama, he has influenced all 
subsequent playwrights, both technically and philosophically. The 
theory of evolution strongly affected his point of view, scientific 
heredity being used as a theme in several of his plays. On the tech- 
nical side, he perfected the "well-made" play of Scribe and Dumas 
fils, and brought to a high development the retrospective method, 
whereby what has happened previously to the rise of the curtain on 
the first act is revealed little by little throughout the play. Elmer 
Reizenstein's recent On Trial similarly works backwards in time, 
but the same method was familiar to the Greeks, whose CEdipus the 
King (Sophocles) most notably makes use of the retrospective 
method. Ibsen's Ghosts and Rosmersholm are the best examples of 
this method, but it is not confined to them. 

The simplicity of Ibsen's technique is like that of the Greeks. 
There is the same compression of the action, often to the actual 
acting time. There is little, if any, change of scene. The language 
is that of real life. Emphasis is laid upon the inner struggle rather 
than upon the outer. Like the Greek dramatists also, he begins 
near the catastrophe and evolves retrospectively the events that 
have preceded. His people are mediocre; he avoids theatric effects; 
he refrains from violent scenes. There is a pervasive atmosphere of 
intellectual discussion; but his realism and satire are tempered by 
poetry and symbolism, especially in his early and final periods. 
Belief in the individual and in the assertion of his rights is apparent; 
but this belief is balanced by regard for the necessity of compromise 
with and for society. 

Of Ibsen's early plays, which were written in verse, Brand and 
Peer Gynt represent two aspects of the Norwegian character. 
Brand is the Quixotic idealist who sacrifices mother, wife, child, 
and friends as well as himself in a sublimely selfish pursuit of truth 
as he sees it. Peer Gynt, the dreamer, compromises with every 
situation, finding his real self at last in the loving heart of a woman. 
Emperor and Galilean is an historical drama on Julian the Apos- 

L14] 



tate. Of the prose dramas not required to be read, Pillars of So- 
ciety depicts the regeneration of a respectable leader of a community, 
whose success has been founded upon deception. Rosmersholm 
relates the suicide of an unhappy wife because of the intrusion of 
her husband's lover, and concludes with their suicide from remorse. 
Hedda Gabler is a somewhat pathological analysis of the vampire 
type of woman. Little Eyolf is a study of parents whose unchecked 
selfishness results in the death of their child, but who find peace 
ultimately in service of the community. John Gabriel Borkman 
studies the financial captain of industry, who has sacrificed love to 
ambition, like The Master Builder and the sculptor in When We Dead 
Awaken. 

In spite of Ibsen's insistence upon greater freedom for the indi- 
vidual, he maintained a profound respect for social institutions in 
The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler, which are, in a way, the obverse 
of the position taken in A Doll's House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the 
People. With him Peer Gynt is also a foil for Brand; Gregers Werle 
the foolish idealist follows Stockmann the resolute, if untactful re- 
former; and the destructive Hedda corrects any misconceptions 
aroused by the individualistic Nora as to a universal revolt of 
women from responsibility and duty. Rosmersholm, The Master 
Builder, Little Eyolf, and John Gabriel Borkman also point out the 
destructiveness of extreme individualism. 

In Pillars of Society, Little Eyolf, and John Gabriel Borkman 
Ibsen approaches individualism from another angle, dealing in 
these plays with children who are expected to shape their careers 
according to the wishes of their parents, and repudiating this point 
of view, as Shaw does also in Misalliance. The problem of the 
artist in conflict with the conventions and duties of society centers 
the attention in The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman, and 
When We Dead Awaken, the artist genius being respectively an 
architect, a financier, and a sculptor. Borkman, like Bernick in 
Pillars of Society, rejects love for power, and Rubek the sculptor 
repudiates love for art, while Solness the builder sacrifices integrity 
to ambition. 

The love interest is dominant in Ibsen's last four plays, The Mas- 
ter Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When We Dead 
Awaken, though phases of the marriage problem are treated in 
A DolVs House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The Lady from 
the Sea, and Hedda Gabler. These last four plays have another sim- 

[15] 



larity in that they all end with climbing; in the last act of each the 
characters ascend to an "elevation," "a plateau", or a mountain 
peak; they start in-doors, and emerge to out-of-doors; beginning 
in a room, they go out and up. This parallels in a measure the 
spiritual quality of the action, which is regenerative, for Solness, 
Allmers and Rita, Borkman, and Rubek all make progress in 
soul development, they all aspire. If argument were needed to 
refute the claim that Ibsen is not fundamentally an optimist, these 
ripest of his plays would be sufficient evidence; but we also have 
Peer Gynt, with its rewarded search for reality, Pillars of Society, 
with its carefully motivated regeneration, An Enemy of the People, 
with its uncompromising loyalty to the truth, and The Lady from 
the Sea, with its transfiguration of a false marriage, as in Little Eyolf, 
into a marriage based on free choice, and becoming thenceforth 
neither a slavery nor an ecstasy, but a mutual service, a friendly 
companionship. Even A DolVs House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Ros- 
mersholm, and Hedda Gabler are not properly to be viewed as 
pessimistic, for Ibsen is showing in those plays what not to do if one 
wishes to live wholesomely and with the expectation of happiness. His 
interest in why and how things happen rather than in what happens 
persists throughout, and for the expression of this attitude his fre- 
quent retrospective action is admirable. 

Bjornsterne Bjornson (1832-1910). Novelist and statesman as 
well as dramatist, Bjornson was the first to found the new drama 
in Norway, but it was the fame that came to Ibsen that attracted 
the world's attention to him. He uses little of the retrospective 
method in his technique, but like Ibsen makes the drama the ve- 
hicle for a free discussion of individual rights and intellectual 
liberty. In a play like The Gauntlet he is obviously the propagan- 
dist. More versatile than Ibsen, he is perhaps more superficial and 
hence more popular. He also began with historical and romantic 
plays, becoming later more concerned with social reform. His work 
shows that he was a practical man of the theatre, like Ibsen again, 
who also was a theatre manager. 

The Newly Married Couple (1865), the first of Bjornson's plays to 
reflect the impact of the mid-century realism, deals with the inad- 
visability of a wife's living with her parents after marriage. The 
Gauntlet (1883) is an example of the play with a thesis. Dealing 
with the "double standard" of sexual morality, Bjornson makes 
here a strong plea that a man should observe the same chastity be- 

[16] 



fore marriage that he expects of his wife. (Cf. the same point of 
view in Rachel Crothers' A Man's World, its repudiation in Augus- 
tus Thomas' As a Man Thinks, and the woman's plea for equal 
sexual experience in Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes, Gals- 
worthy's The Eldest Son, and Sudermann's Magda, where the 
woman refuses marriage as a means of reparation for her injured 
honor. Somerset Maugham in A Man of Honor showed how futile 
was the chivalry of such a marriage.) Beyond Our Power (I.) deals 
with human limitations in regard to healing the sick by faith (Cf. 
Jones' Judah and Moody's The Faith Healer), while its sequel, 
Beyond Human Might (II.) — the second part of Beyond Our Power 
— is concerned with the limitations which beset economic and 
social reform. (Cf. also Galsworthy's Strife). Specifically, Beyond 
Human Might is a drama of industrial conflict, postulating the futil- 
ity of violence in the settlement of labor disputes. (Cf . Tarking- 
ton and Wilson's The Gibson Upright, which shows the need for 
leadership and capital in industry.) In Love and Geography a 
husband regards his work as more important than attention to his 
wife and daughter; in When the New Wine Blooms, it is the wife and 
three daughters who regard their own interests as more important 
than consideration for the husband and father. 

August Strindberg (1849-19 12). The great Swedish drama- 
tist was the chief opponent of Ibsen's ideas of emancipation for 
women, savagely attacking the rise of feminism, especially in The 
Father, Miss Julia, and Comrades. He bitterly indicts woman as 
the robber of man's power, portraying the instinctive duel of sex 
most strongly, perhaps, in the one-act study of hatred called 
Creditors. He defended his attacks upon the other sex by declaring 
that he chid woman because he loved her so well, and it is well to 
remember that his preoccupation with the disharmonies of married 
life were not merely negative and autobiographical ; keenly sensitive 
to the suffering of his own unhappy and loveless childhood, he 
wished to help the new generation towards better and more compati- 
ble unions. An infinite pity for all human misfortune marks his 
work. Woman was a source of perturbation to the end, though in 
After the Fire he suggests that the conflict she produces may be as 
desirable as that between fire and water, which produces steam. 
Elsewhere he suggests that the alternations of love and hate between 
male and female may be as necessary as the repulsion existing 

[17] 



between positive and negative electricity. Certainly the most carp- 
ing critics cannot deny that in Lucky Pehr, Easter, and Swanwhite 
he has presented sweet and appealing women. 

His early historical play Master Olof is said to have inaugurated 
Sweden's dramatic renaissance. Like his Norwegian contempo- 
raries, he was also a practical theatre manager. As there are 
resemblances between his Christine in Master Olof and Ibsen's 
Nora in A Doll's House, and between Strindberg's Lucky Pehr and 
Ibsen's Peer Gynt, so the Swedish dramatist's Miss Julia is a study 
in degeneration comparable with the Norwegian's Hedda Gabler, 
while The Spook Sonata is faintly reminiscent of Ghosts in more than 
title. In The Dream Play we have a triumph of genius. Only a 
master of technique could have attained the singular felicity of form 
of this tour deforce. There is nothing else in literature quite like it; 
no other dream play which catches in so remarkable degree the 
peculiar psychology of the actual dream state. Note the shifting 
point of view and the successive changes of scene, melting one into 
the other. It is fantastic, incoherent, kaleidoscopic, grotesque, and 
curious — like a dream. And yet it has a unity, and is dramatic. 
Even its digression to interpret Brahmanistically the origin of evil 
fits into the general scheme of the play. With Miss Julia, the pre- 
face, as with some of Shaw's plays, is of more value than the play 
itself, with its forceful if ruthless application to human beings of 
biological and eugenic principles: Strindberg is here advocating the 
elimination of the unfit. The Link, like Brieux' The Cradle and Her- 
vieu's The Nippers, shows the harm done to the child by divorce. 

LESSON I 

A. Required reading: Introductory remarks and the excursus on the 

Scandinavian Drama (pp. 3-18); Chandler: pp. 1-10. 

B. Optional: Archibald Henderson's The Changing Drama, pp. 3-83. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1 . What were the characteristics of the Greek drama? 

2. What differentiates the Elizabethan drama? 

3. What does Ibsen owe to the masters of the "well-made" play? 

4. Why is Ibsen regarded as the greatest of the contemporary dramatists? 

5. What is the definition of a play? 

6. What is meant by the drama of ideas? 

7. How does Strindberg's point of view differ from Ibsen's? 

8. Name a dramatist from each of the Scandinavian countries, with one 
of his important plays. 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

i. What is the new dramatic conception of fate? Illustrate from 

plays read. 
2. What contemporary plays observe the three classical unities? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Make a summary of the material read, stressing those parts which 
seemed to you the most important. 

2. Write illustratively on the drama of recessive action, and the 
drama of explication. 

LESSON II 



A. Required reading: Ibsen's A Doll's House; Chandler: pp. 13-18, 193. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's Brand and Peer Gynt. 

A Doll's House (1879) is one of the best of Ibsen's social dramas, the 
drama of ideas. This play is written around and for the sake of the last half 
of the last act, where the husband and wife struggle for mastery of the situa- 
tion. The equality and individuality of woman is Nora's theme. Ibsen is 
attacking the parasitic conception of marriage, which subordinates the indi- 
viduality of a woman to her duties as wife and mother. He contrasts also 
Nora's generous deed with her husband's "commonplace principles of honor," 
which do not take into account the motive of an action. The play aroused 
violent opposition, to such a degree that German theatre-managers forced 
Ibsen to have a happy ending; but that was eventually abandoned and 
the piece is now produced as originally written, with Nora leaving home. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Outline the play, giving the chief episodes in topic form. 

2. Who is responsible for Nora's parasitic nature? 

3. How does Dr. Rank contribute towards the action of the play? Note 
the germ of Ghosts in his discussion of his undeserved suffering. 

4. How does Nora justify her separation from her children? What is the 
basis for her fear lest she contaminate them? 

5. How does the story of Mrs. Linden contribute to the main theme? 

6. Point out the use made in the play of hereditary influences. 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. What does Nora mean by "the miracle"? Will her separation from 
her husband be permanent? 

2. Is her revolt justifiable? Is it adequately prepared for? 

[19] 



3. Do you feel that Nora's presentation of her case to her husband is 
as one-sided as his former assumption of superiority? Note at 
least the somewhat melodramatic language of part of her argument. 

4. Compare this struggle for mastery between man and wife with 
that of the couple in Strindberg's The Father. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Note as many points of contrast as possible between the charac- 
ters of Brand and Peer Gynt. 

2. How far does the dramatist make each responsible for his nature? 

3. To what extent should Brand have compromised? 

4. Compare Brand with Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 

5. Why is the destruction of Brand by an avalanche symbolically 
appropriate? 



LESSON III 

A. Required reading: Ibsen's Ghosts; Chandler: pp. 18, 19, 22, 23. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's Rosmersholm. 

Ghosts (1881) was written to show what would happen if the contract of 
marriage were made so inflexible that no sanction was given a woman to 
leave her husband. It was a reply to those critics of A DolVs House who had 
asserted that no wife had such a right. Two points may well be raised in 
this connection: whether the case presented is not too extreme (a) for the 
purpose of defending such a contention, and (b) as matter for art. Note also 
how, as in A Doll's House, though much more here, we learn act by act of 
the important preceding circumstances. Only enough of the past is given 
in each scene to explain and prepare for the present action. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Outline the play, not as it is unfolded, but according to the actual 
chronology of the events, past as well as present. 

2. Outline the play according to Ibsen's presentation of the events, not- 
ing each place where references to past events are inserted. 

3. What is the significance of the title? In this connection note a 
speech by Mrs. Alving which foreshadows the theme of the following 
play (An Enemy of the People). 

4. How does Oswald justify the request that his mother should put him 
out of his incurable misery? 

5. Note the economic compulsion that drove Mrs. Alving to marry, and 
compare with that of Mrs. Linden in A DolVs House. 

6. What is the theme of Rosmersholm? 

[20I 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. For what purpose is Oswald sent away? Would the environment 
of his home have been better for him than his life abroad? 

2. To what extent is he helpless in the hands of fate? Whose is the 
original responsibility for this tragedy? Cf. fate in CEdipus and 
Hamlet. 

3. Whom does Pastor Manders represent? What is the implication 
of the failure to insure the orphan asylum? How does it intensify 
the main theme? 

4. How does the case of Regina parallel that of her half-brother 
Oswald? How does it intensify the main theme? Cf. the sub- 
plot in King Lear. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. the retrospective action in Rosmersholm with that in Ghosts. 

2. Is the repudiation of individualism here inconsistent with its 
championship in A Doll's House! 

3. What abnormality of disposition is hereditary with Rosmer? 

4. What is it that weakens Rebecca's strength of will? 

5. Was Beata's suicide one of self-sacrifice or despair? 

6. Cf. Rosmer with Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck. 

LESSON IV 

A. Required reading: Ibsen's An Enemy of the People; Chandler: pp. 16, 17, 

20, 21. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. 

An Enemy of the People (1882) was written in answer to the fierce at- 
tacks made upon the two preceding plays. Ibsen here defends the reformer, 
who, like himself, is bitterly assailed when he proposes to tell unpleasant 
truths. Dr. Stockmann maintains that most truths cease, however, to be true 
after eighteen or twenty years, though still rigidly adhered to by the majority; 
and hence that majorities are generally wrong. The play becomes, in a 
measure, a repudiation of democracy, arguing that the breed and ability of 
the mongrel masses must necessarily be inferior to that of the aristocratic 
minority. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Make a list of the episodes of the play. 

2. Does Stockmann in any way accomplish his purpose? 

3. On what grounds does Ibsen attack the control of the majority? 

4. What reasons did the people of the community have for siding against 
Stockmann? 

[21] 



5- What analogies from the animal world does Stockmann use to prove 
his argument for leadership by the carefully bred minority? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Are the long passages in Stockmann's speech dramatic? Cf. An- 
tony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 

2. Should Stockmann have remained silent? Should Ibsen? 

3. For whom does old Morton Kiil stand? Is he overdrawn? Is 
there any symbolical quality in Stockmann's daughter Petra? 

4. What methods could Stockmann have used to obtain his ends? 

5. How far, according to this play, is the principle of democracy 
valid in practical government? Is public opinion generally wrong? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1 . Re-read Hedda Gabler to note the economy of details, especially in 
the exposition. See how the opening lines build towards the final 
climax, every phrase contributing some vital element to the devel- 
opment of the psychological portrait of the title figure and her 
inevitable tragedy. Note how much we have learned about 
her before she herself appears. Few plays are more compactly 
constructed. 

2. What characteristics of her husband serve to intensify her discon- 
tent with her surroundings? Is their incompatibility insurmount- 
able? 

3. Would Hedda have been happy if she had married a man like 
Judge Brack? How does he contrive to put her in his power? 

4. What is the significance of the title, which calls her still by her 
father's name rather than by her husband's? (She remains Hedda 
Gabler, not Hedda Tesman.) 

5. What were the circumstances of her marriage with Tesman? How 
does her training unfit her to face the present situation? 

6. What are Hedda's reasons for burning Lovberg's manuscript? 

LESSON V 

A. Required reading: Ibsen's The Wild Duck; Chandler: pp. 24-26. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman. 

The Wild Duck (1884) seems at first to deny the validity of ideals 
which Ibsen, in Brand and An Enemy of the People had been at such pains to 
show his heroes upholding in their conduct. But he is really protesting 
against blind allegiance to a formula rather than against genuine idealism, 
just as he had shown how destructive was Brand's formula, "All or nothing." 
Ibsen gives the name of his only sister to the appealing child, Hedwig. The 



original Hedwig was of a mystical bent. The poet wrote to her in 1869, 
"You are certainly the best of us." The situation of Hedwig in the play is 
like that of Eyolf in Little Eyolf, who also had a selfish parent, and like the 
unfortunately illegitimate Dina Dorf in Pillars of Society. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Outline the events of the play. 

2. To what extent does heredity appear in this play to explain the tem- 
perament of Gregers Werle and Hjalmar Ekdal, and the physical 
handicap of little Hedwig? 

3. Note the specific illusions of the various persons of the play. 

4. How does Hedwig's suicide strengthen the main theme of the play? 

5. Who is Ella Rentheim? 

D. Questions for papers: 

1. Is the revelation of the past that comes to the Ekdal household at 
all regenerative? 

2. Does Dr. Relling's doctrine of the necessity for some specific 
illusion in life apply to all? Does it imply a fundamental pessimism? 

3. Upon whom does the blame rest for this tragedy which overtakes 
an innocent child? 

4. Note the symbolical relationship between the wounded wild duck 
and Hedwig. Does this symbol represent also the Ekdal family as 
a whole, or perhaps humanity in general, crippled by limitations 
of all kinds, hiding under illusions from the probing of meddlesome 
"truths-mongers? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Why does Borkman believe that he is lifted above the operation 
of the laws and standards which govern the average member of 
society? 

2. What has most seriously undermined him, his crime or his rejec- 
tion of love for material power? 

3. Is there a symbolical meaning in the snowstorm in which he dies 

4. Does Borkman's consciousness of his mistake come in time to 
allow him to make reparation? 

LESSON VI 

A. Required reading: Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea; Chandler: pp. 24, 

25. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's Little Eyolf. 

The Lady from the Sea (1888) has to do with the necessity for freedom 
of choice in marriage, with real love as a fundamental requirement. Ibsen 

[23] 



had already touched on this theme in Hedda Gabler, with some light stress 
also upon the economic compulsion that drove Mrs. Alving to marry, and 
Mrs. Linden as well. Here the theme is complicated by a singular obsession 
with the sea, and a previous moral obligation to a Stranger who seemed to 
personify all that was mystical and restless in her nature. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Tell the story of the play as briefly as possible, but connectedly. 

2. What ground is there for believing that Ellida manifests recessive 
characteristics of an earlier fish stage in human development? 

3. What bearing does the fact of her maternal insanity have on her 
condition? 

4. How may her early environment account for her mood? 

5. How can the peculiarity of her child's eyes be accounted for? 

6. How does the selfishness of Little Eyolf's parents react upon him? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Why is it that the Stranger is represented finally as quite common- 
place and prosaic? 

2. How does it happen that he finally loses all power of attraction 
for her? 

3. Is the "happy ending" here logical? 
(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. the motive of Ellida in marrying Wangel with that of Allmers 
in marrying Rita in Little Eyolf. 

2. Is the death of Eyolf regenerative for the parents? Is there a cyn- 
ical element in the facility with which Ibsen makes them turn from 
the effects of their selfishness to the contemplation of the joys of 
service? 

3. Cf. the irony of Allmer's attempt to write a book on "Human 
Responsibility" with Gregers Werle's failure to make a fire in his 
own stove. 

4. In Pillars of Society, Little Eyolf, and John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen 
deals with children who are expected to shape their careers accord- 
ing to the wishes of their parents. Is his repudiation of such an 
attitude sound? How does Eyolf's uniform, which so accentuates 
the pathos of his condition, bear on this consideration? 

5. Cf. the Rat Wife as a symbolical figure with others, such as the 
Button-Molder in Peer Gynt, the Queen in The Death of Tintagiles, 
and the Angel in Hannele. 

6. Note the similarity of the remorse of the parents for their uninten- 
tional "murder" of Eyolf with that of Solness the Master-Builder 
for willing the fire that destroyed his house and fatally exposed his 
children. 

[24] 



LESSON VII 

A. Required reading: Ibsen's The Master Builder; Chandler: pp. 10-12, 

26-29, no. 

B. Optional: Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken. 

The Master Builder (1892) is the most difficult of Ibsen's plays to 
interpret, for it is charged with symbolism. It marks a return to the more 
poetic mood of his earlier plays, and while realistic in from contains many 
secondary, and often obscure, meanings. The play grew out of an incident 
of Ibsen's own life: in the summer of 1889, when he was sixty-one years old, 
he had a love affair with a young Viennese lady of eighteen, Miss Emilie 
Bardach; and the references to the churches, houses, and towers which Sol- 
ness builds may also be autobiographical, referring to the three types of his 
plays, the romantic dramas, the social dramas, and the symbolistic plays. 
As a representation of real life, the relations between Hilda and Mrs. Solness 
seem hardly natural ; but if Hilda stands not only for the younger generation 
but also for the youthful aspiration of Solness himself returned to him, then 
there is a consistent meaning. There is a similar difficulty about other 
symbols. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Pick out the various objects, events, and persons which may have 
symbolical meaning. Try to interpret them consistently. 

2. Taken literally, what comparison is there between Hilda and Hedda 
Gabler? 

3. What are some of the inconsistencies in the relations between Hilda 
and Mrs. Solness? 

4. What points of resemblance are there between Solness the Builder, 
Borkman the Financier, and Rubek the Sculptor? 

5. Explain the term subjectivist as applied to Ibsen. 

6. What are some of his limitations? 

D. Questions for papers : 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is The Master Builder a tragedy of ambition like Macbeth, or is 
there a spiritual triumph at the close? Why does Hilda remain 
gazing upward? 

2. Is the play effective without any interpretation of the symbolism? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What is the significance of the title, When We Dead Awaken} 

2. Cf. the setting here with that of Brand and John Gabriel Borkman. 

3. Is Rubek's defence of his conduct as a genius valid? 

4. Why is it that his conception of his masterpiece undergoes such a 
change? 

[25] 



LESSON VIII 

A. Required reading: Bjornson's Beyond Our Power (I); Chandler: pp. 

147-149, 160-169, 185-188, 334-336, 350-352. 

B. Optional: Bjornson's The Newly Married Couple, The Gauntlet, the 
second part of Beyond Our Power, usually translated as Beyond Human 
Might. 

Beyond Our Power (I.) (1883) is Bjornson's most powerful play. The 
spiritual potency of love and faith in healing the sick is shown to be limited 
by the laws of nature. The play does not solve the question it raises, whether 
it is Pastor Sang's faith that makes his invalid wife walk, or her love for him; 
neither is it clear whether we are to assume that his faith was so great that it 
made the avalanche swerve aside. At any rate the miracle of healing, if such 
it is, results in the death of both the pastor and his wife. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Note the references to Pastor Sang by others, and put down the var- 
ious traits of his character which they signify. 

2. What effect does the churchmen's discussion of miracles have upon 
the action of the play? Why do they oppose such demonstrations? 

3. What is the wife's comment on her husband's excessive idealism? 

4. Why has the priestly hero so long been satirized upon the stage? 

6. What treatment does Ibsen give this type? 

7. What artistic objections are there to depicting ministers in plays? 

8. How does the ending of Moody's The Faith Healer differ from Bjorn- 
son's play? 

9. What is the point of Brieux' Religion! 

10. To what type of drama does The Newly Married Couple belong? 

11. How is the theme of Love and Geography complementary to that of 
When the New Wine Blooms} How is the point of view of both at 
variance with that of Ibsen? 

12. In what way is the second part of Beyond Our Power a sequel to the 
first part? 

13. Compare Bjornson with Ibsen in as many respects as possible, mak- 
ing parallel lists of characteristics. 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required; reading: 

1. Cf. the relations between Pastor Sang and his wife with those be- 
tween Wellwyn and his daughter in The Pigeon. 

2. Is the ending of this play tragic? Is it a repudiation of faith? 

3. What effect is gained by calling attention to the bleak surround- 
ings in which the Pastor's family live? Cf. Brand. 

[26I 



(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Does the thesis of The Gauntlet develop gradually and naturally 
out of the action, or does it seem forced? Does Ibsen embed his 
idea in his action better than Bjornson? Illustrate. 

2. Should the mother have revealed to her daughter her father's 
infidelity? Cf. Ghosts. 

3. Cf. Holger's argument in Beyond Human Might with Stockmann's 
in An Enemy of the People. 

LESSON IX 

A. Required reading: Strindberg's The Father; Chandler: pp. 63, 86, 87, 

180, 181, 203-205, 294-306. 

B. Optional: Strindberg's Miss Julia, The Dream Play. 

The Father (1887) is one of the most powerful and unpleasant plays 
written. It is well constructed, containing a single idea which is effectively 
worked out: a woman drives her husband mad by arousing his doubts as to 
the paternity of their child. A minor character, as with King Lear, faces a 
situation similar to that of the main characters. The portrayal of the wife's 
icy selfishness, her intolerable hatred of the husband because of the intensity 
of her desire to control her daughter, are memorable. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Note the economy of the dialogue. Do you find any lines irrelevant 
to the total effect? 

2. Pick out passages that portray character by deft conversational 
touches which at the same time forward the story. 

3. What is the Captain's idea of immortality? 

4. What two plays of Strindberg are like two of Ibsen's in their titles, and 
somewhat in their themes? 

5. What is Strindberg's idea of woman? of love? 

6. How does Strindberg's life account for his misogyny? 

7. What are some of Strindberg's other plays, and what are their themes? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(o) From the required reading: 

1. Is the Captain insane when he throws a lighted lamp at his wife? 

2. Cf. Laura's ruthlessness with the pursuit of Tanner by Ann in 
Man and Superman. How is it that we like both of Shaw's char- 
acters more than Strindberg's? 

3. What is it that Strindberg's play lacks? 

4. Do you sympathize with either of the main characters in The Fa- 
ther? Why (not)? Are they responsible for their abnormal traits? 

[27] 



5. Do they act with sufficient naturalness to produce the illusion of 
reality? Illustrate. 

(b) From the optional reading : 

1 . Cf . Miss Julia with Hedda Gabler, as a powerful study in degen- 
eration. Note the causes which have led to Julia's and Hedda's 
condition. Are they responsible for their destruction? 

2. Are such psychological victims a menace to society? Is their 
death then really tragic? Would a "happy ending" be consistent or 
possible? 

3. Why does Jean have such power over Julia? Do they love? 

4. What positive aspects has the play? Is Strindberg a mere mis- 
ogynist? 

5. Does Strindberg show marriage and feminism to be, contrary to 
Ibsen, incompatible? 

6. Cf. Julia with Laura. Is Julia, hysterical, capricious, parasitic, 
more, or less, womanly? Does she appeal to your emotions? 

7. Is The Dream Play dramatic? Is it altogether pessimistic? 



[28] 



PART III 

German Drama {with Austrian Drama) 

After the epoch of Lessing, whose Minna von Barnhelm was the 
first purely German play, and of Goethe and Schiller, a period of 
blight ensued for German drama, relieved only by the talent of 
Grillparzer and the genius of Hebbel and Wagner. Without the 
natural gift to invent a new type of play and unwilling to copy the 
artifice of the unloved French school, the German stage languished. 
Adaptations of the French society play, supplied with German 
local color, did find their way to the major theatres through the 
skill of Paul Lindau, Oscar Blumenthal and others, and the histori- 
cal dramas of Ernst von Wildenbruch also relieved the dearth of 
native material. But it was not until 1889 that Arno Holz and 
Johannes Schlaf united their efforts to give in The Selicke Family 
the first promise of the new art that was to break with the past so 
completely. This play, the first attempt at naturalism in the Ger- 
man theatre, was shown to Hauptmann in manuscript before he 
had written Before Dawn, which was to surpass Holz and Schlaf 
in the mastery of a technique that used the fragmentary speech of 
daily life and depicted the commonplace. 

Credit for the production of this strikingly photographic play 
must be shared with the brilliant journalist, Maximilian Harden, 
the critics, Theodor Wolff and Paul Schlenther, and the accom- 
plished stage-manager, Otto Brahm, all of whom helped organize 
the Free Stage Society (Verein Freie Buhne) in Berlin in 1889. 
Like Antoine's Theatre Libre which had preceded it at Paris by 
two years this new theatre began with plays by Ibsen, Tolstoy, 
Zola, and Goncourt, but Hauptmann was the first native contribu- 
tor, though it should be remembered that almost simultaneously 
at the Lessing Theatre Sudermann was having striking success with 
another naturalistic play, Honor. 

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862- ), the foremost dramatist of 
Germany today, has written two distinct types of play, but unlike 

[29] 



Ibsen, his realistic plays came first, and the romantic and poetic 
dramas later. In a play like Hannele, a dream poem in two parts 
rather than a play, the two tendencies are combined, and we have 
the most striking naturalism in juxtaposition to the most exalted 
romanticism. Few of Hauptmann's plays, however, are alike in 
form, subject matter, or treatment. Poetry, allegory, and folk-lore 
mingle in The Sunken Bell, while his first play, Before Dawn, is the 
most undiluted scientific realism. 

This play, contributed (1889) to the Free Theatre movement in 
Germany and considered the first important example of the new 
naturalistic school, remains one of the most conspicuously un- 
relieved, almost brutally negative pictures of life, comparable only 
with Ibsen's Ghosts. Lonely Lives has points of similarity with the 
Norwegian's Rosmersholm, and the symbolism of And Pippa Dances 
is even more confusing than The Master Builder] but The Weavers 
excels by reason of its powerful depiction of lives imprisoned and 
ruined by poverty. Drayman Henschel and Rose Bernd, two great 
dramas of the peasantry, contain also protagonists more sinned 
against than sinning, the latter reminding us of Hardy's Tess of 
the d 1 Urbervilles ; while in The Rats the people of the slums swarm 
across the stage, some of them as repellent as the villains of Dickens, 
but less sordid than the figures in Gorki's terrible sink of humanity, 
The Night Refuge. In Griselda, we have an interesting psychologi- 
cal and eugenic version of the old "patient Griselda" story. But it is, 
perhaps, the figure of the giant teamster Henschel and the similarly 
passive and simple-souled sufferer Rose Bernd that stand out most 
compellingly from Hauptmann's work. 

Hermann Sudermann (1857- ). Beginning as a successful 
novelist, Sudermann produced his first play in 1889, Honor, which 
with Hauptmann's Before Dawn began the new naturalistic drama 
of Germany. This dramatist combines truthful delineation of 
character with the presentation of a social problem or thesis, 
resulting usually in a combined unpleasantness and purposefulness. 
Sudermann frequently uses the "triangle situation," of one man and 
two women, or two men and one woman, and is fond of depicting 
the erring woman, representing her as largely justified in Magda, 
The Fires of St. John, and The Joy of Living, and as unalterably 
weak and vicious in John the Baptist, Honor, and The Destruction of 
Sodom. With little of the poetry and power of characterization of 

[30] 



Hauptmann, he is superior as a craftsman; less idealistic, he is 
a greater technician. 

Frank Wedekind (1864- ) notoriously exhibits degenerates 
and erotomaniacs, but in The Awakening of Spring, he unfolds a 
tragedy of adolescence, the psychology of which is so manifestly 
true that one can bear the repellant details. Sex love to him is 
wholly sensual, a mad lust of the flesh; but in this "children's 
tragedy" he is attacking the pernicious system of repressing the 
facts of sex in training youth. Like Cosmo Hamilton's milder play, 
The Blindness of Virtue, it argues for educated virtue rather than 
dangerous innocence. Wedekind's view of love is different from that 
of Strindberg's clean hatred of its arbitrary power, or Shaw's good- 
humored explanation of it as an impersonal cosmic force for race 
perpetuation, or the cloying beauty of D'Annunzio's presentation 
of it as a languorous disease, or the worldly sentimentality of 
Schnitzler's characterization of its charm and impermanence. The 
sensational character of Wedekind's work is best seen in plays like 
The Dance of Death, Hidalla, and the two plays Earth Spirit and 
The Box of Pandora, these two presenting a study in nymphomania 
in the person of the terrible Lulu. Wedekind's The Awakening of 
Spring influenced the school dramas of two other North Germans, 
Max Dreyer and Otto Ernst, whose satires of the pedagogical 
system in Germany are quite the opposite of the sentimental 
Old Heidelberg of Meyer- Forster. 

Closest to Sudermann in his flexible technique, with something 
of the manner of Grillparzer, is Ludwig Fulda (1862- ), who 
began with satirical comedies like those of Paul Heyse, followed 
these with naturalistic dramas like Hauptmann's, responded next 
to the romantic reaction with marchen dramas such as The Talisman, 
wrote comedies like Robinson's Island with its theme similar to the 
later Barrie triumph, The Admirable Crichton, tried his hand 
at a verse tragedy, wrote serious prose dramas, one-act plays, and 
light comedies like The Blockhead, and translated Ibsen and 
Rostand. 

Carl Hauptmann, Gerhart's younger brother, more of a 
philosopher than dramatist, wrote three praiseworthy naturalistic 
dramas, but his originality is more pronounced in chronicle plays 
on Moses and Napoleon, and in an extraordinary performance 

[31 1 



called War — a Tedeum, which produces the effect of a nightmare. 
More akin to Gerhart Hauptmann in his naturalistic gifts is Georg 
Hirschfeld (1873- ) whose Agnes Jordan was unique in its 
structure until Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch fourteen 
years later wrote Milestones, with its three acts similarly separated 
by a wide space of years. Max Halbe (1865- ) is also best as 
a naturalistic dramatist, though even his historical dramas show 
environment in the form of nature as a determining influence upon 
character, when not actually destructive of life. In Youth he 
shows the effect of heredity and environment upon a family, and 
here, as frequently, his characterization seems more forceful than 
the elder Hauptmann's. Halbe is to be remembered also for his 
experiments with the new dramatic forms at his Intimes Theatre 
at Munich. 

The native German drama is not now rich in comedy, though 
some of the one-act pieces of Sudermann are admirable, while with 
Fulda as a comdey-writer must be grouped the gifted Otto Erich 
Hartleben, whose untimely death in 1905 at the age of forty-one 
deprived Germany of a Teutonic Shaw. As a satirist he was much 
less bitter than his fellow Bavarian Ludwig Thoma, if less vigorous. 
But Germany has little comedy of the lighter sort; for this they 
must turn either to Paris or to the Austrians, Schnitzler and Bahr, 
who use the same language. Aside from its naturalistic contribu- 
tions, the world owes to Germany perhaps as much to the stage- 
craftsmen, Max Reinhardt and Gordon Craig, for their poetic 
experiments in setting and scenerey, costume and color, as to any 
contemporary German dramatic poet. 

Of the Austrian dramatists, other than those who furnish us 
with the well-known and characteristic Viennese musical come- 
dies, most important is Arthur Schnitzler (1862- ). In 
Anatol this Viennese covers with delicate sentiment the most inti- 
mate conversations of lovers and mistresses. In Living Hours, an 
invalid mother of unusual qualities commits suicide lest her condi- 
tion continue to depress her poet son, who justifies the sacrifice in 
a manner like that of the sculptor in D'Annunzio's Gioconda, who 
also places art above life and love. The Lady with a Dagger ingen- 
iously uses reincarnation, like the American comedy, The Road to 
Yesterday (in England adapted as When Knights Were Bold) and 
in a less degree like Kennedy's The Servant in the House. In The 

[32] 



Legacy we have a problem play, and in the more pretentious Young 
Medardus semi-historical drama; but his cynical dialogues in one 
act on light loves are probably most representative and at the 
same time most appealing. 

Hermann Bahr (1863- ) deals with the triangle situation 
in The Concert in a way recalling Barrie's What Every Woman Knows, 
which preceded it by a short interval. In both plays an excep- 
tional man is married to a clever woman whose tactful indulgence 
disabuses him of his desire for infidelity. Percy Mackaye's Anti- 
Matrimony uses the same theme. 

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874- )» a ^ so representing the 
Viennese school of drama, is known most widely for his moderni- 
zation of the Greek play Electra, making the heroine a pathological, 
even melodramatic, figure. His aesthetic renderings of other Greek 
stories entitle him to high rank as a dramaturgic artist. 

Most powerful of the Austrian realists is the Tyrolese Karl Schoen- 
herr, whose tragedy Faith and Fatherland, dealing with religious 
conflicts, is of a high order, while She Devil, with only three charac- 
ters, shows the triangle situation in a peasant's kitchen with com- 
pelling vividness. 

Hungarian Drama 

Of the Hungarian drama, like that of the Czechs, there is little 
to commend on the ground of originality. Ferenc Molnar's sen- 
sational play The Devil had a long run in America, but this was due 
in part at least to the novelty of seeing the title figure as one of the 
active dramatis personae. The Bohemian, Jaroslav Vrchlicky 
(in English he is known as Emil Frida) , has made many adaptations 
of French and German successes, while dramas of peasant life have 
been done in the naturalistic fashion by Subert and Gabriela Preisz, 
and dramas of the life of the working people by Simaczek. Idyllic 
romance characterizes The Clouds, by Jaroslav Kvapil. 

Dutch Drama 

The Dutch have at least one important dramatist in Hermann 
Heijermans, Jr., whose naturalism comes by way of Germany. 
The Ghetto is a treatment of the relations between Jew and Gentile, 
like that of Henri Bernstein in the French play, Israel, and like 
Israel Zangwill's problem on American immigration, The Melting 

[33] 



Pot) but while prejudice against the Jew is the driving force of 
Zangwill's and Bernstein's plays, prejudice against Gentiles is 
Heijermans' theme. In The Ship of Good Hope there are reminis- 
cences of both Ibsen's Pillars of Society and Synge's Riders to the Sea. 
It is not the sea but the severities of winter that is the protagonist 
in Ora et Labora, while The Coat of Mail shows militarism to be an 
evil for those who toil and are poor. Satire of bigotry, with a 
characteristic photographic fidelity and fatalism, motivates All 
Souls. 

LESSON X 

A. Required reading: Excursus on German and Austrian drama: pp. 29-34; 

Hauptmann's The Weavers; Chandler: pp. 35-42, 30-34, 47. 

B. Optional: Hauptmann's Before Dawn. 

The Weavers (1892) is one of Hauptmann's greatest plays, showing the 
crushing power of an adverse environment. Heredity plays its part here also, 
for the result of extreme poverty on one generation is seen to be effective at 
least as weakened vitality or as predisposition to disease on the part of the 
next. The structure of the play is unique in that not a hero but a mob is the 
protagonist, or chief character. It is the weavers as a class, and not as indi- 
viduals, that are emphasized. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. State as briefly as possible what takes place in each act. 

2. Note the opening stage directions particularly, and then those that 
follow, and put down references that seem to you to show the effects 
of poverty upon the second generation. 

3. What figures stand out from the rest? Do they dominate the action 
for more than an act? 

4. What is the emotional reaction from the first act? Does it constitute 
a drama in itself? How is it connected with Act II? 

5. Of what value is naturalism in the theatre? What is it? 

6. What is the logical defect in Before Dawn? 

7. In what play does Hauptmann comment upon naturalism? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is the visual appeal in The Weavers stronger than that made by 
the dialogue? Compare with the film play. Why is exposition 
omitted? 

2. Is the action continuous from act to act? What effect is gained 
by the successive changes of scene and people? What unifies them? 

[34] 



3. Do you feel after finishing Act I that revolt is inevitable? Is there 
an underlying sense of a tragic outcome? How is that feeling inten- 
sified by the accidental shooting of old Hilse in Act V? Is there 
any "poetic justice" in the play? Are the weavers responsible for 
their condition? Are the manufacturers? Is sympathy aroused 
equally for them? Is there a villain in this play? 

4. Will the mob be successful? Why (not)? Is their violence in any 
way salutary? 

5. Cf. Shaw's discussion of poverty as a crime, in Major Barbara. 
What are the reactions of poverty upon society in Hauptmann's 
play? 

6. Cf. Galsworthy's Strife and Bjornson's Beyond Human Might (II). 
(See Chandler: 350-352.) 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Hauptmann's Before Dawn with Ibsen's Ghosts. 

2. Cf. the idealism of Loth with that of Gregers Werle in The Wild 
Duck. 

3. Do you feel from this play that Hauptmann is needlessly negative 
in his presentation of life? Would a "happy ending" have been 
possible? 



LESSON XI 

A. Required reading: Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell; Chandler: pp. 60- 

62, 84-86, 89-96, 148. 

B. Optional: Hauptmann's Hannele. 

The Sunken Bell (1897) is Hauptmann's best known play, its compli- 
cated symbolism comparable with Ibsen's The Master Builder. The theme 
is not unlike, either, with its central figure that of the creative genius whom 
doubts assail. Autobiographically, the sunken bell represents Hauptmann's 
unsuccessful historical play Florian Geyer. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What type of play is Hannele? 

2. What incident in The Sunken Bell is like a scene in Sudermann's 
The Three Heron Feathers? 

3. How does the allegory in The Sunken Bell shift the moral emphasis 
in the last act? 

4. Note down the different scenes of the play. 

5. What are the scenes in And Pippa Dances? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

[35] 



1. Is a genius justified in sacrificing his family for art? Cf. Stock" 
mann's sacrifice of his family for a principle. 

2. Cf. Rautendelein with Hilda in The Master Builder. 

3. Is it shown by his works or his deeds that Heinrich is a great 
artist? Should he have stayed in the valley? Why does he fail? 
Who are the dwarfs that revolt from giving him assistance? 

4. Is Hauptmann suggesting that the artist by his genius is lifted 
above the operation of the laws and standards which govern the 
average members of society? Cf . with Solness, the Master Builder. 

5. Whom do the Vicar, the Barber, and the Schoolmaster represent? 
Why does Heinrich charge them with having killed his wife? 
Are they responsible? 

6. Is the play effective without understanding the symbolism? Cf. 
Rostand's Chantecler in this respect. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Hannele with Strindberg's Dream Play. Note the element of 
contrast in both plays. 

2. Can it be said that there is a conflict, a struggle of wills, here? 

3. Is Hannele responsible in any way for the tragedy of her exist- 
ence? Cf. the fatality here with that of Ghosts and Before Dawn. 

4. Cf. Heinrich with John Gabriel Borkman, Rubek in When We Dead 
Awaken, and Lucio in Gioconda (D'Annunzio). 

LESSON XII 

A. Required reading: Hauptmann's Rose Bernd; Chandler: pp. 111-113, 
125-127. 

B. Optional: Hauptmann's Drayman Henschel. 

Rose Bernd (1903) and Drayman Henschel are Hauptmann's two great 
peasant dramas. Both are examples of naturalism, but both are superior to 
Before Dawn and The Reconciliation, which cannot arouse the sympathetic 
response obtained by these. Greater than Henschel is Rose, a German Tess 
of the D'Urbervilles. Like Henschel, she is brought to her tragic undoing 
because of her simplicity, her resignation. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. In what respects does Rose resemble her father? 

2. What is the tragic defect in her character? 

3. Note the simple, natural, conversational quality of her impassioned 
criticism of life in the last act, when she protests against the injustice 
of her father's attitude. Has suffering for her been salutary? 

4. Why are Lonely Lives and Gabriel Schillings' Flight grouped together? 

5. Is the character of the inoffensive lover Keil consistent? Is there a 
reversal in our feeling towards him? Does this mark a change in him? 

[36] 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is Rose responsible for the forces that overwhelm her? Do you 
feel a determinism operative throughout the play? 

2. Is it, as she insists, an unselfish, protective impulse of true mater- 
nity that bids her prevent the possibility of her child's suffering a 
life of agony like hers? If so, is Hauptmann's view of life normal? 

3. What inherited qualities contribute to her downfall? What ele- 
ments of her training? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. How are our sympathies for the giant teamster aroused? 

2. What is his tragic fault? Why does he believe in fate? Is his 
conscience over-sensitive? What was his motive in breaking his 
promise not to marry? 

3. What characteristics of the peasant does he embody? Is he over- 
whelmed because of his evil or his good propensities? 

4. Are the steps in the moral degeneration of Hanne clearly shown? 
Is the illusion of reality greater when development is thus shown, 
or is Ibsen's method of relating the prior incidents retrospectively 
equally effective? Cf. Rosmersholm with its fewer characters 
and incidents. Which gives the greater illusion of reality? 

5. What purpose is served by Hauptmann's introduction of such 
minor characters as Franziska? Do they add "atmosphere," 
reveal aspects of the main characters, or forward the plot primari- 
ly? Do we remember them when the play is done? Why (not)? 

6. Note how in the last act Henschel's character is progressively 
developed, and how the feeling of suspense and terror is cumulat- 
ive. Is the suicide justified? inevitable? Cf. Before Dawn, Hed- 
da Gabler, Miss Julia, Justice, Othello. 



LESSON XIII 

A. Required reading: Sudermann's Magda; Chandler: pp. 43-45, 56, 128- 

133. 323-324. 328-330. 

B. Optional: Stanley Houghton's Kindle Wakes, Somerset Maugham's 

A Man of Honor. 

Magda (1893) is probably the most perfect in construction and the most 
effective of Sudermann's plays, a triumph of the so-called well-made play, 
notable for unity, clearness, and a definite struggle of wills. The theme is 
modern, the protest of the woman genius against her constraining family 
traditions and parental control. It is also the struggle of the younger genera- 

[37] 



tion with the older, as in Ibsen's The Master Builder, Bennett's Milestones, 
and Stanley Houghton's The Younger Generation. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. From the exposition of the first act, which skilfully unfolds the past, 
the atmosphere of the home, and the character of Magda, how much 
do we know about her before she appears? 

2. In Act II, while the action is carried forward, how much more of her 
past is revealed by further exposition? 

3. Note the effective climaxes for each act. Does each carry forward 
with increasing intensity our suspense and interest? 

4. What is the gist of Magda's defense of her course? 

5. What is the tragic weakness of Schwartze? 

6. What is the main difference between Sudermann's Johannes and 
Wilde's Salome! 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is Magda's rebellion against the environment of her father's home 
justifiable? Should she have obeyed her father upon her return? 
Should she have confessed her past to her father? 

2. For the sake of legalizing her child, should she have made some 
compromise? To what extent? 

3. Magda, like Hedda Gabler, is the daughter of an officer. How 
does this fact affect the action? 

4. How has Magda's environment changed her? Has she improved 
or not? 

5. Does this play seem to have been written primarily as a dramatic 

entertainment, or as a thesis play, to prove something? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Magda's refusal to marry her betrayer with that of the mill- 
girl in Hindle Wakes. 

2. If Magda had married von Keller, would the result have been like 
the futile chivalry of the marriage in A Man of Honor? 

3. Cf. Magda with Shaw's Misalliance. How much independence 
should a parent give a child? How far are parents responsible 
for their children's conduct? 

4. Cf. Magda's refusal with that of the heroine in Galsworthy's The 
Eldest Son. (Chandler: 324-325.) 

LESSON XIV 

A. Required reading: Sudermann's The Vale of Content; Chandler; pp. 
113-116. 

[38] 



B. Optional: Ludwig Lewisohn's The Modern Drama; pp. 128-134, II0_ 

128; Schnitzler's Anatol. 

The Vale of Content (1896) is a good example of the "triangle situation," 
and subtle in its psychology. Notable also for its admirable hero and hero- 
ine and its consequent happy conclusion; for Sudermann's women are gen- 
erally weak, like Hauptmann's men. Elizabeth has something of the fine 
nature of Magda, while the theme of the play is like that of The Lady from 
from the Sea. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What would have been Elizabeth's solution of her problem? 

2. What is the secret of the power which Roecknitz exercises over 
Elizabeth? Is it the same which the Stranger has over Ellida Wangel? 

3. Is the impulse which urges Elizabeth and Ellida to go the same? 

4. How much is revealed by the last three words in Act I? 

5. What is the significance of Elizabeth's final line in the last act? 

6. What is the logical defect in The Fires of St. John? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. Elizabeth and Magda as carefully as possible. 

2. Cf. the theme of this play with that of Ibsen's The Lady from the 
Sea. How does the husband's attitude free the wife from her 
desire to leave home, in both plays? 

3. Cf. Wiedemann with Wangel. Which seems the more admirable 
character? 

(b) From the optional reading : 

1. Write a summary of Sudermann's work and his characteristics. 

2. Write a summary of Hauptmann's work and his characteristics. 

3. Compare the respective contributions of Sudermann and Haupt- 
mann to the German drama. 

4. Characterize the various women in Anatol. Show how each is 
clearly differentiated from every other. 



[39] 



PART IV 



Russian Drama 



Always a highstrung and emotional people, alternating under 
long tyranny between despair and high, naive hopefulness, the 
Russians have found relief chiefly in the novel, with its wide can- 
vasses and its possibilities for profound searchings of the human 
spirit. A certain social emphasis, a tendency to didacticism, is 
carried over from the novel into the drama. With a nature in part 
Oriental, the Russian artists cannot escape a certain peasant-like 
passivity, which unfits their dramatists for the depiction of vivid, 
active life such as has been the customary material for the stage. 
But they have reflected many if not all of the contemporary lit- 
erary currents, including mysticism, symbolism, impressionism, as 
well as the most bitter and hopeless realism. To Michel Fokine 
we owe the creation of the Russian ballet, and other choreographic 
features, while Bakst, Stanislawsky, and Ordynski are to be ranked 
with Craig, Reinhardt, and the English and American scenic ar- 
tists for their contributions to the more decorative aspects of drama. 
Dantschenko's Art Theatre at Moscow is one of the most famous 
of the New Theatre ventures, and at the Sea Gull Theatre in that 
city an attempt has been made to associate together the novel and 
the drama, for here are to be heard readings from the famous novels 
of many lands, informal dramatizations of certain scenes being 
interspersed with the presentation by an elocutionist of the more 
narrative passages. 

It was to Tolstoy that the Free Theatres of both France and Eng- 
land first turned for contributions from Russia for their repertory, 
and his Power of Darkness was given many times in both Paris 
and Berlin. 

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), greatest of the Russian writers, is 
poorest in dramatic technique. Didactic to a fault, he nevertheless 
exhibits his customary skill in characterization. With more hope- 
fulness than Gorki or Tchekhov, he likewise shows environment 

[40] 



overcoming his protagonists, but with possibilities of regeneration. 
The Cause of it All and The First Distiller are tracts against drink, 
while Resurrection and The Man Who Was Dead protest respectively 
against the futility of the law in punishing crime and in solving 
solving marital complexities. As a whole he deals with the squalor, 
the stupidity, and the primitive passions of the peasants. 

Maxim Gorki (1868- ) is likewise concerned with the delin- 
eation of character, but depicts chiefly the people of the city slums, 
rather than of the country. One of the most hopeless pictures of 
human misery ever penned is his The Night Refuge, which is fatal- 
istic and static rather than dramatic, but none the less a tour de 
force, like Bjornson's Beyond Our Power, Strindberg's Dream Play, 
and Wedekind's The Awakening of Spring. It is a cinematograph 
picture of a hell on earth. 

Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) is the transcendentalist of the 
Russian dramatists, discussing the purposes of life, in the abstract 
rather than in sharply individualized characters. To the Stars 
is a memorable picture of a philosophical astronomer, unperturbed 
by the flaming revolt around him, finding beauty in the processes 
of the universe even when his son lies tortured to death. The Life 
of Man is a modern morality play, The Black Masquers shows 
the influence of both Poe and Maeterlinck, and Anathema uses some- 
thing of the method of Faust and Job in its figure of Satan sifting a 
peasant's soul. Satire is dominant in Sabine Women, with its 
references to national events in 1905, while allegory takes the lead 
in the sympathetic but singular Sorrows of Belgium. 

The mystic symbolism of Feodor Sologub is second only to 
Andreyev, while Michael Artzybashev, whose eroticism created 
such a stir in two continents in his novel Sanine, has a realistic 
domestic drama, with the scene that of the conflict of 1914, called 
War. 

Probably the most prominent of the comparatively unimportant 
Polish dramatists, who are chiefly imitative, is Lucyan Rydell, 
with a direct adaptation of Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell in The 
Magic Circle. 

Anton Tchekhov (1860-1904). Best of the Russian dramatists 
in his sense of form, Tchekhov, like his fellow-countrymen, portrays 
characters that are too ordinary to arouse keen interest, and uses 

[41 1 



dialogue of the most casual sort. Leaving the peasants of Tolstoy, 
the slums of Gorki, and the transcendental abstractions of Andreyev, 
he shows us the monotony in the lives of the poor "intellectual" 
class. Akin to the naturalistic school as most of the Russian plays 
are, Tchekhov's especially are static rather than dramatic in their 
action. Dingy lives pass slowly across a dull canvas. True peas- 
ants in temperament, trained through long centuries to endure and 
submit, his protagonists succumb because of their patience and pas- 
sivity. Unlike Tolstoy and Gorki, who ignore dramatic technique, 
Tchekhov intentionally revolts against the conventions of his art, 
avoiding struggles, climaxes, and theatric devices of all sorts. 
Intent only on presenting the drab realities of life as he sees it, he 
seeks to arouse sympathy for individuals who suffer from mere 
existence. 

His Ivanov is a Russian Hamlet, an ordinary, weak, introspective 
creature, unable to conquer his adverse environment. Ivanov's 
wife is equally pitiable, a Jewish Ophelia, similarly overwhelmed 
by "the immortal commonplaces of life." The Seagull, with its title 
reminding us of The Wild Duck and The Pigeon, has a character, 
Nina, like Ellida in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. Her lover, Tri- 
gorin, is supposed to be a picture of the dramatist himself. 

LESSON XV 

A. Required reading: Excursus on Russian drama: pp. 40-42 ; Tchekhov's 

The Cherry Orchard; Chandler: pp. 221-224, 308-309, 179. 

B. Optional: Gorki's The Night Refuge, Andreyev's To the Stars; Chandler: 

pp. 42, 224-225, 337-338. 

The Cherry Orchard (1904) does not have a dramatic plot, in the usual 
sense of a conflict of wills, a struggle; but while the action is that of a novel 
rather than of a drama, it has interest of itself: a spendthrift brother and 
sister are dispossessed at last of their home and beautiful cherry orchard, 
by the wealthy peasant who buys in the property. The action of such a 
play as this is quite different from that of Sudermann's Magda, where the 
issue is clear-cut, and the struggle is active, not passive. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What examples are there throughout the play of the foreshadowing 
of the final events? 

2. What gives the main interest to the play? 

3. Do you feel the lack of vigorous action? 

[42] 



4. Do you feel pity for the characters? 

5. Why is Ivanov called a Russian Hamlet? 

Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. How does Tchekhov's method lend itself especially to the depic- 
tion of weak-willed characters? 

2. Are exhibitions of violence on the stage more arresting than pre- 
sentations of inward conflict? Illustrate with specific plays. 

3. How do Maeterlinck and Tchekhov exhibit psychological action? 

4. Suggest how the same set of characters could be used in a play 
where the action is vigorous rather than passive. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Is there humor in The Night Refuge? 

2. Is such a play an accurate picture of life? Is it suitable for artistic 
presentation? Why (not)? 

3. Is Andreyev optimistic? 

4. Cf. the work of Gorki and Andreyev in these two plays. 

5. Cf. the cosmic philosophy of To the Stars with Man and Superman. 

6. Cf. Tchekhov with the static plays of Maeterlinck. Note any 
differences in method. 

7. What is the theme of The Man Who Was Dead? 



[43] 



PART V 

French Drama {with Belgian Drama) 

After the Golden Age of French drama, which, later than the Eng- 
lish, but earlier than the German, occurred in the seventeenth cen- 
tury with its Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, there are no great 
names until Victor Hugo, whose Hernani in 183 1 was an overwhelm- 
ing triumph for Romanticism in the French theatre. The master- 
piece of Emile Augier and Jules Sandeau, Mr. Poirier's Son-in-Law, 
was an admirable social comedy. Alexandre Dumas, fils, is more 
nearly contemporary with Camille, which won for him world-wide 
fame. But by the early Eighties the "well-made"play, which Scribe, 
Dumas fils, and Sardou had brought to perfection, was generally 
discredited by the best critics of all Europe. Labiche, Meilhac, and 
Halevy had already abandoned the form as too symmetrical to be 
used any longer in comedy, and the influence of Zola in the novel 
and of the stern Scandinavian, Ibsen, was beginning to have its 
effect upon tragedy. While the farce, with its favorite theme of 
marital infidelity, continues to be found at its best in France, nat- 
uralism, though foreign to the temperament of this people, did find 
a foothold. 

It was Henri Becque (1 837-1 899) who was the originator, in 
The Crows (1882), of the French naturalistic school of drama, which, 
after 1887, was produced at its own theatre, the famous Theatre 
Libre, under the leadership of Andre Antoine. Overshadowing the 
desire to represent life photographically, however, is the Gallic 
tendency either to laugh sophisticatedly at its follies, or else to 
present an idea in the so-called thesis play. 

Eugene Brieux (1858- ) and Paul Hervieu (1857- ) 
rank as the best exponents of the thesis play in France. Like Gals- 
worthy, they are sociologists, using the drama as the medium by 
which to get their ideas before the public, but they are less artistic 
in method than the Englishman. Brieux is particularly frank and 
utilitarian, attacking most of the abuses of our time, but with such 

[44] 



sincerity that his message holds the audience. Hervieu is partic- 
ularly interested in attacking certain phases of the law in its 
relation to the marriage question, but in a more coldly logical man- 
ner than Brieux, whose interests are at the same time broader. 
Hervieu is, however, the great psychologist of the modern French 
stage. 

Hervieu's The Nippers, like Strindberg's The Link, shows divorce 
to be undesirable for the sake of the child, which binds the parents 
together permanently. This theme recurs, with even greater em- 
phasis, in Hervieu's The Labyrinth, while The Passing of the Torch 
shows the sacrifice that parenthood must always undergo for the 
next generation and the race. 

Brieux is often crudely didactic, given overmuch to platitudes; 
his sentiment is frequently mediocre; but his passion for the beauty 
of orderliness, cleanliness, and justice is always evident. Declaring 
himself the enemy of every abuse of power and all authority, "be- 
cause in human hands they develop sooner or later into tyranny," 
he probes the evils of the political "system" in The Machine, shows 
the abuses of charity in The Philanthropists, attacks the charlatan- 
ism of science in The Escape, the defects of the legal system in The 
Red Robe, the dowry in The Three Daughters of M. Dupont, social 
disease in Damaged Goods, and unlimited motherhood in Maternity. 
In several of these plays, as also in Blanchette and Woman on her 
Own, poverty or the fear of it is revealed as a contributing cause, 
woman by her sex being especially hampered in the struggle for 
existence. The effect of wrong parental control is another factor 
also, especially in The Brood and The Cradle, where, like Strindberg 
in The Link and Hervieu in The Nippers, Brieux shows how the 
fact of parenthood serves as an indissoluble bond to re-unite a 
father and mother. To him the institution of the family is sacred 
because of the child, who is a consideration supreme over all others. 
In its behalf he attacks the liaison, in The Deserter, and the inter- 
ference of the husband's parents in Suzette, just as Bjornson, in The 
Newly Married Couple, had urged a wife's separation from her 
parents. 

Edmond Rostand ( 1864-19 19), turning away from the problem 
play and the realistic method, deals with life poetically and 
romantically. One of his plays, however, is as strongly rooted in a 
.scientific basis as those of his fellow-countrymen: UAiglon is a 

[45] 



tragedy primarily because of the inescapable laws of heredity which 
motivate the action and limit the success of the invalid son of 
Napoleon and Maria Louisa, descendant of the decadent Austrian 
line. In Cyrano de Bergerac Rostand had previously given an inim- 
itable picture of the old-time, unconquerably romantic hero, val- 
iant, hot-blooded, brilliant, and the soul of honor. With Coquelin 
in the title part, this was the greatest success of the modern stage. 
Other distinguished actors have appeared in Rostand's plays, 
notably Mme. Simone, Sarah Bernhardt, Richard Mansfield, and 
Maude Adams. 

But the thesis play of Brieux and Hervieu, or the romantic drama 
of Rostand, does not represent the prevailing type to be found on 
the present-day French stage. The theme of illicit love is charac- 
teristic of the work of such men as Donnay, Porto-Riche, Bataille, 
and Capus. A play like Maurice Donnay's (1854- ) The 
Other Danger has no thesis, content only with studying the heart 
of a woman whose daughter is her rival, and for that reason is 
better than his charmingly sentimental Lovers. In The Return 
from Jerusalem, racial antipathy between Jew and Gentile com- 
plicates the love theme. With less of the lyric note in his dialogue 
and with less also of the light touch in his treatment of love, is 
Georges de Porto-Riche (1849- ), whose The Old Man 
shows a father's rivalry with his son bringing about the latter's 
death. A somewhat decadent note appears in Henry Battaile's 
The Foolish Virgin, where a wife forgives and takes her husband's 
part against his mistress, while in Dame Nature it is the wife again 
who forgives, allowing her husband to leave her for a princess. 
Such plays as these have failed when performed before English- 
speaking people, though a piece like Alexandre Bisson's Madame 
X had considerable popularity because of the striking, though sen- 
timentalistically treated, scene where a son as judge unknowingly 
tries the case of his mother. The jaunty tone of the comedies of 
Alfred Capus have made him popular for three decades, his 
light touch being apparent in such plays as The Little Minxes, 
The Husbands of Leontine, the titles of which are an index of their 
contents. The independent woman believing in an easy standard 
of morality for herself as well as for her friends of the opposite sex 
is a characteristic figure in plays like his Rosine and The Wounded 
Bird, while The Beauty Shop shows the frivolous side of his nature 
at its height. 

[46] 



Among the less serious comedy writers should be mentioned the 
prolific collaborators, de Flers and Caillavet, with their senti- 
mental and satirical pieces, expert in construction ; Albert Guinon, 
less technically efficient but still pleasing, in Happiness showing the 
incompatibility of love and marriage for women; Jules Lemaitre, 
whose social comedy The Pardon is very effective, with clever dia- 
logue and wide human sympathy also apparent in his carefully 
wrought Forgiveness with its three characters, and in The Studio 
Assistant; and Henri Bernstein, who most of all the current 
French writers carries on the Scribe-Sardou tradition, each one of 
his plays being built to the old specifications around some thrilling 
situation. Less local in his point of view, he is also less important 
for his intellectual content, but achieved notable success none the 
less in America as well as at home for The Thief, Israel, The As- 
sault, and The Secret. 

Henri Lavedan (1859- ) excels in cynical and clever char- 
acterization, in such plays as The Prince d'Aurec studying the 
decadence of the French aristocracy, and in High Life and other 
comedies depicting the life of the boulevards with rare fidelity. 
Often too wordy, as in The Duel, he betrays an ethical undertone 
which formerly found expression in his novels and moral dialogues. 
Like Lavedan in this ethical emphasis is Paul Hyacinthe Loyson, 
with his serious treatment of illicit love in The Right of the Virgins, 
though less emphatic in his didacticism than Brieux. More psy- 
chology than in either, however, is to be found in the work of 
Francois de Curel (1854- ) with his romanticism wavering 
between naturalism and sensationalism in such abnormal studies 
as The New Idol, where a physician experimenting upon a tubercu- 
lar girl inoculates her with cancer, only to become fatally infected 
himself, though sustained by her innocent faith. In The Wild Girl, 
the title figure, no longer able to endure Western civilization, goes 
to a distant island in the Southern seas and there is made a queen. 

But to France, which introduced naturalism and at the same 
time still supplies the world with many farce-comedies, the classical 
influence that gave rise to the symmetry of the "well-made" play 
of Scribe, Sardou, Sarcey, and Dumas fils, finds permanent expres- 
sion in revivals of classic plays at the Theatre Francais, by a "stock 
company of distinguished actors endowed by the national govern- 
ment for that purpose. Here are regularly to be heard the best 
plays of Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Hugo, and Musset, while at 

[471 



the Odeon, with less ambitious acting, more attention is given to 
nineteenth century farces and to some of the contemporary plays. 
In Paris, too, the symbolists first found a stage for their work in 
the Theatre de l'CEuvre of Lugne-Poe, while the anarchists had a 
monopoly of the Theatre d'Art Social. From these various inde- 
pendent theatre movements, beginning with the Theatre Libre of 
Andre Antoine in 1887, sprang the similar ventures of Berlin, Lon- 
don, Hamburg, Vienna, Dublin, Glasgow, and Manchester. 

Of the Belgian dramatists the most famous is Maeterlinck, but 
mention should at least be made of Henry Kistemaeckers, whose 
successful play Instinct shows man's veneer of civilization giving 
way in a crisis to the primitive brutal instincts. 

Maurice Maeterlinck (1864- ), the "Belgian Shakespeare," 
philosopher even more than dramatist, uses the drama as a vehicle 
for the presentation of scientific allegories. He created the static 
play, the drama of situation and atmosphere. His early work, 
though strongly fatalistic, is perhaps not more so than his last play, 
The Betrothal, which presents love-making so strongly from the 
view-point of heredity that the hero has no volition in the matter 
at all. Many of his plays are mystic and symbolic, yet Monna 
Vanna showed that his dramatic ability is not limited to the expres- 
sion of sub-conscious moods or semi-conscious feelings. The help- 
lessness of mankind is a dominant note in his early work, where he 
finds the futile struggle of the individual against the powers of evil 
best typified in our mastery by death. Again and again this theme 
possesses his work, notably in The Intruder, The Seven Princesses, 
Home {Interior), The Blind, and The Death of Tintagiles, where the 
action, such as it is, is fundamentally a struggle to repel this in- 
vader. Only in The Blue Bird is Death repudiated, and there by 
the children who maintain "There are no dead," but who do not 
venture to assert that there is no death. This delightful fairy-tale 
is an allegory of mankind's search for happiness, which is found 
neither in the Land of Memory, the Palace of Night, the Forest, the 
Abode of Luxury, the Graveyard, or the Kingdom of the Future, 
but only in the present, the here and now, and then only momen- 
tarily, in acts of generous giving. 

In the early play, The Princess Maleine, the repetition of the 
same phrase again and again results in an almost lyric quality 
which, if well rendered, is extraordinarily effective, but which may 

[48] 



easily become absurd. In The Intruder also the simplicity but excep- 
tionally arresting quality of the dialogue intensifies the feeling of 
suspense and awe in the presence of approaching death. The plot 
is generally unimportant, nor are the characters vivid and indi- 
vidual; the emotional effect obtained, however, from these presenta- 
tions of ordinary daily life is powerful. In Home {Interior), there 
are many lines which have nothing to do with either plot or charac- 
ter, yet the total effect is none the less enhanced. We look in through 
the windows of a house upon a family to whom those outside are 
bringing news of the daughter's drowning, but the scene is effective 
in spite of the lack of sound and speech from within the house when 
the old man finally goes in with his message. The final scene is 
therefore curiously near to the method of the motion picture, the 
pantomime being commented upon by those outside in a manner 
somewhat analogous to the comments printed on the screen of the 
"movie" play. In The Death of Tintagiles the leading figure, the 
monstrous Queen who destroys the child, does not appear at all, 
shut from the living as she is by a seamless wall of iron high up in a 
tower. In this five-act play the symbolism and the effect obtained 
are the same as in the one-act plays, The Intruder and Interior. 
The method of question and answer, repeating the same phrase 
several times, is again employed dexterously. With The Blue Bird 
the stage presentation is likely to detract from the fullest enjoy- 
ment, because the play is so highly an appeal to the imagination; 
but it is effective not only when its symbolism is properly inter- 
preted, but also for its fairy-tale plot. The method of the allegory 
is somewhat similarly employed in Rostand's Chantecler. 

LESSON XVI 

A. Required reading: Excursus on French and Belgian drama: pp. 44-49; 

Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande; Chandler: pp. 60-61, 63-64, 
80-84, 102-105, 321-322. 

B. Optional: Maeterlinck's The Blind, The Intruder, Interior {Home). 

Pelleas and Melisande (1892) is a re-telling of the Paola and Francesca 
story, and the first of Maeterlinck's plays to revert to the more conventional 
plot. Up to this time he had not been interested in character portrayal 
primarily, writing instead, as he put it himself, dramas for marionettes. His 
plots had been symbolic, his figures types rather than individuals, somewhat 
in the manner of the older comedy of masks, the Italian "comedia deH'arte. w 

[49] 



Even The Princess Maleine, with its Elizabethan horrors, has no real char- 
acterization. Here, however, though the atmosphere is still dream-like, 
there is a distinct plot and a development of the power to draw human beings. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Are there any scenes that could be detached from the rest of the play? 

2. Is the loss of the ring a vital episode? 

3. What elements of the play seem to be introduced for the sake of 
decorative effect? 

4. Is interest aroused primarily because of the characters or because of 
what is going to happen? 

5. What is the difference in quality between this play and Monna Vanna? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is there a lack of structural unity in this play? Be specific. 

2. Would this play suffer from being produced on a stage? 
Why (not)? 

3. Does it convey anything to a reader that could not be as adequate- 
ly conveyed to an audience? Is it a play? 

4. What is the predominant emotion of the play? Note the emo- 
tional key of each scene. 

5. Do you feel the presence of Fate here? Is it like that of Greek 
drama? 

(6) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. the action here with the lack of it in The Intruder and The 
Blind. Are the characters here more vivid and distinct? 

2. Is your sympathy aroused more for Melisande than for the family 
in Interior or that in The Intruder} Why (not)? 

3. Note lines in these plays which have nothing to do with either 
plot or character. 

4. In The Blind how do the twelve people differ from each other? 

5. Is the final scene in Interior more, or less, effective because of the 
lack of sound and speech from within the house? Are the com- 
ments of those outside needed, or would the pantomime alone 
have been enough? 



LESSON XVII 

Required reading: Brieux' The Red Robe; Chandler: pp. 48, 166-169, 
178-179, 197-198, 201-203, 228-229, 307-308, 338-339> 342-345, 363- 



368. 



150 1 



B. Optional: Brieux' The Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Maternity. 

The Red Robe (1900) is not an attack upon courts of law but upon de- 
fects in the French practice of law; not the institution, but the over-ambi- 
tious men in it, are satirized. The strongest parallel to this play exists in 
Galsworthy's Justice, where the method is more subtle and the feeling more 
restrained. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. At what point in the play do you become aware of the thesis? 

2. What compels the officials to find a victim upon whom to fix the guilt 
of the crime? 

3. What was Vagret's motive in changing his attitude towards the 
accused? 

4. What motive actuates the procureur general in his change of tactics 
towards Mouzon? 

5. Why does the president of the assizes hasten the trial? Why does 
the lawyer for the defense offer himself for the task? 

6. Give the theme of The Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Damaged Goods, 
and Maternity. 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. What parts of the legal system does Brieux show to be weakest? 
What parts inherently bad? 

2. Cf. this play with Galsworty 's Justice. 

3. Does the satire seem too strong here? Show why (not). 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Is the thesis in The Red Robe better embedded in the play than in 
The Three Daughters of M. Dupont? Is the satire stronger? 

2. Which is the better off, the wife, the old maid, or the prostitute, 
in The Three Daughters of M. Dupont? 

3. Note the comedy scenes in these plays. Analyze the humor of 
Brieux and compare with Shaw. 

4. Does Brieux disagree with Ibsen's point of view as to the advisa- 
bility of a woman remaining with a man she does not love? Cf. 
Ghosts. 

5. What is the center of attack in these plays? Marriage? 

6. Is Maternity in any way a contradiction of the thesis in The Three 
Daughters of M. Dupont? 

7. Cf. the effects of alcoholism in this play with those in Before 
Dawn. Is Tupin's defense valid? 

8. Cf. the final court scene in Maternity with the court scene in Gals- 
worthy's Justice. Why is such a scene dramatically effective? 

[5i] 



LESSON XVIII 

A. Required reading: Hervieu's Know Thyself; Chandler: pp. 176-177, 

182-184, 198-201, 206-209, 229-231. 

B. Optional: Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird. 

Know Thyself (1909) is a thesis play, showing how the conventional 
method for avenging one's honor breaks down in a case where personal feel- 
ings and affections are concerned. Greater than Brieux as a psychologist, 
Hervieu shows here also play-building power of the highest magnitude; the 
plot is as symmetrical as an equilateral triangle. In fact, the plot is com- 
posed of two "triangle" situations which are deftly united. The scene, too, 
is unchanged, and the time covers but ten hours. This is classic severity of 
form, and this severity applies also to the somewhat abstract beauty of the 
whole; for while the thesis is unobtrusive, it is worked out with such mathe- 
matical precision that the characters seem more like numbers in a problem 
than individuals. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Does every scene contribute to the central idea? What is the idea? 

2. Does the adherence to the classic unities of action, time, and place 
seem forced as you read the play? 

3. Are the characters more, or less, individualized than in Brieux? 

4. How does the title apply to this play? 

5. What is the theme of The Passing of the Torch? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. How does Hervieu obtain the effect of inevitability in the earlier 
acts of Know Thyself? 

2. Is the "happy ending" logical? 

3. Is the symmetry of the plot too artificial? If so, note the places 
where this is the case. 

4. Cf. the methods of Brieux and Hervieu. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. As a fairy-tale dramatized is The Blue Bird effective, or does its 
essential effect depend upon the proper interpretation of its sym- 
bolism? 

2. Cf. the scene in the Graveyard with Maeterlinck's previous pre- 
sentations of death. How does this differ? 

3. Is the Blue Bird some specific kind of happiness? Why is it found 
at home? Why are there so many birds in the Palace of Night? 

4. Cf. the allegorical elements of this play with Chantecler. 

[52] 



5- Cf. the Dog here with Patou in Chantecler. Whom does he rep- 
resent in each case? 

6. Does one act develop logically out of the preceding? What consti- 
stitutes the unity of the play? 



LESSON XIX 

A. Required reading: Rostand's Chantecler; Chandler: pp. 49-51, 63. 

B. Optional: Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, UAiglon. 

Chantecler (1910) is a social satire in the form of an allegory. It is a 
type of play which goes back to the comedies of the Greeks, when Aristophanes 
used animals in such plays as The Birds and The Frogs as a means of 
satirizing human beings. The Fables of ^sop and La Fontaine are another 
instance of our liking for this sort of symbolism. The play bears evidence 
of having been written for a "star," as was the case. Though Coquelin, the 
French actor, one of the world's greatest, died before Chantecler could be 
produced, the title part demands as much versatility as that of Cyrano de 
Bergerac, which was also written for him. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Is the symbolism clear? 

2. Why is the Prologue effective? 

3. Is Chantecler's Hymn to the Sun dramatic? His profession of faith? 

4. Who is the Blackbird? the Pheasant Hen? the toads? the hawk? the 
Guinea Hen? the Peacock? 

5. Why is a "costume" play, of which this is a type, desirable as a ve- 
hicle for poetry, rather than the play which uses only conventional 
and everyday habiliments? 

6. Why is UAiglon called theatric? 

7. In what respects is Cyrano de Bergerac romantic? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Why does Chantecler leave the barnyard? Cf. Nora leaving her 
home in A DolVs House. Who is Chantecler? 

2. What similarities are there between Chantecler and Cyrano? 

3. What general differences are there between the symbolism of this 
play and that of The Master Builder} 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. the exposition of Cyrano with that of one of Ibsen's plays. 

2. Cf. the entrance of the main character here with that of one of 
Ibsen's or Hauptmann's. 

[53] 



3. What accounts for the extraordinary success of this play? 

4. Is the death of Cyrano logical and necessary? 

5. Which is the leading character in LAiglonl 

6. Why is it that the Duke fails? 

7. How does he resemble his father? 

8. Is his death tragic or merely pathetic? 



541 



PART VI 

Italian Drama 

To the Italians we owe the modern concepts of the musical 
drama and, to a degree, of the theatre itself. The first musical drama, 
or "melodrama," to use the original term which today we express by 
the word opera, was produced in Florence in 1599 by Rinuccini and 
Peri, the forerunners of many dramatic musical composers who 
were to make the Italianate court of Vienna noted for this form of 
art. While Italy has no native "mysteres" (mystery plays) like 
those developed in France, the origins of the Italian stage go back 
to the "laude" or "praises" of the Franciscan monks of the thirteenth 
century, who wrote short, dramatic imitations of the Passion in 
verse. With the Renaissance came the study of classic models, 
affecting thenceforth both tragedy and comedy. But along with 
these literary influences a type of comedy was developing peculiar 
to Italy — the "comedia dell' arte," finding its origins in the art of 
the mountebank. Its chief characteristics were its extemporan- 
eous quality and its stock types, such as Pantaloon, Pierrot, Colum- 
bine, and Graziano the doctor. Most of the situations, the witti- 
cisms, and the bits of stage business used in the drama of today find 
their prototypes in this comedy. Broadened at length by the in- 
fluence of the Spanish dramatists, Lope, Montalvan, and others, 
the "comedia dell' arte" began to make use of stage settings as 
splendid as those of the court pageant and the popular melodrama. 
Even Moliere built his plays along the lines of this Italian concept 
of comedy, while Goldoni, who with Alfieri, was to influence the 
nineteenth century so long, actually wrote his plays in this style, 
although substituting real characterization for the fixed types. 
Giacinto followed the Goldoni tradition most closely, while the 
historical tragedy of Manzoni was carried on by Pietro Cossa 
(1830-1881). The typical "well-made" play of the French school 
was perfected by Paolo Ferrari (1 822-1 889) and Vittorio Berse- 
zio, while the Ibsen influence is seen to best advantage in Edoardo 
Butti (1876-1913), Roberto Bracco, and Marco Praga, of 

[551 



whom Bracco is the best known abroad, though another Italian, 
Dario Niccodemi, is perhaps oftenest acted outside of his own 
country, writing as he does from Paris. Bracco's Hidden Spring has 
resemblances to Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken and to Hauptmann's 
Lonely Lives, while his Phantasms uses a situation similar to Haupt- 
mann's Drayman Henschel. Butti's Utopia makes a strong applica- 
tion of eugenics to state policy, arguing that for the sake of the 
race deformed children should be destroyed, with The Tempest a 
close second in its advocacy of drastic reforms, philosophizing 
about industrialism. But the more characteristic Italian emphasis 
upon passion and beauty, rather than upon idea, is to be found in 
Praga's work, his erotic, not to say neurotic, qualities being appar- 
ent almost to the degree that we find them in D'Annunzio. Power- 
ful imagination redeems Sem Benelli's tragedy The Jest (The Sup- 
per of Pranks in the original), made famous in America by the 
Barrymore brothers in 19 19, while revenge is the theme also of 
several of Giovanni Verga's plays of his native Sicily, though he 
will be remembered chiefly for his dramatization of his own Caval- 
leria Rusticana. With D'Annunzio and Benelli should be grouped 
Ettore Romagnoli as an able craftsman in the reproduction of 
effective historical background. 

But the prolific Guiseppe Giacosa (i 847-1 906) is the best rep- 
resentative for Italy of the more normal type of drama, where love 
is sane and healthy, just as D'Annunzio embodies most notably 
the opposite point of view, giving sensational melodrama its most 
exalted expression. Giacosa belongs to the romantic school, using 
both verse and prose, going for his material to medieval as well as 
to modern themes, and manifesting ability in the opera field also, 
writing the librettos for Pucini's La Bohlme, La Tosca, and Madam 
Butterfly. In As the Leaves he has given us a fine example of modern 
social comedy, dealing with a reversal of family fortunes, while his 
The Stronger, like Octave Mirabeau's Business is Business, deals 
with the moral struggle between a man who, though a devoted 
father, is unscrupulous in his business dealings, and his inexperi- 
enced son — a theme which is made use of again in Barker's The 
Voysey Inheritance. 

Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863- ), renowned as soldier and 
aviator no less than as Italy's leading dramatist, believes in the 

[56] 



religion of beauty; in his pursuit of it, he would sacrifice life itself. 
Decadent, exotic, morbid as much of his work is, in Gioconda he 
defends what is beautiful as necessarily good, and does so with ex- 
ceptional lyrical power. The struggle between the wife and the 
mistress for the possession of the artist was perhaps never more 
beautifully argued, but the horror and pathos in the last act, cen- 
tering on the wife's hands, mutilated in the attempt to save her 
husband's sculptural masterpiece from Gioconda's jealous fury of 
destruction, is unnecessarily prolonged. In The Dead City, he deals 
with incest, and in The Light under a Bushel, The Ship, and Fedra, 
the themes are hardly more pleasant. 

Eleanora Duse has earned abroad as well as at home the right to 
be called Italy's greatest actress; for her D'Annunzio wrote Gio- 
conda. America also remembers Novelli's spirited interpretations of 
Othello and other Shakespearean plays. 

Roumanian Drama 

To the drama of the Romance countries belongs also the Rouman- 
ian drama, closest in form and content perhaps to the Italian than 
to the Spanish or French type. Of this Roumanian drama, the 
work of Caragiale is to be remembered for his successful comedies 
of manners, wherein he reflects the temper and the texture of his 
own locale. 



[57] 



PART VII 

Spanish Drama 

After the brilliance and prolific versatility of Lope de Vega, and 
the swiftly moving plots and lyric quality of Calderon, the drama 
of Spain, like that of England following the Elizabethan age, suf- 
fered something of an eclipse. In the nineteenth century Jose 
Zorrilla's fantastic-religious Don Juan Tenorio was the most suc- 
cessful Spanish drama, furnishing even in the twentieth century a 
theme upon which Shaw's genius based entirely new conceptions 
in Man and Superman. The cloak and sword play, with its endless 
intrigues, its jealousies, and its avenging of honor according to a 
code often strange to Anglo-Saxon conceptions, still holds the 
Spanish stage; but in 1880, long before the Grand Guignol theatre 
in Paris or the Princess Theatre in New York had experimented in 
offering exclusively one-act pieces, the Apollo Theatre of Madrid 
had established the custom, which has been popular ever since, 
while at the Lara Theatre in the same city the two-act play has been 
developed as a definite type. 

Jose Echegaray (1833- ), chief dramatist of modern Spain, 
deals with points of honor according to the Spanish code. In The 
Son of Don Juan (1892), he unfortunately betrays his inferiority 
to Ibsen by using the Scandinavian's Ghosts for his theme, but with- 
out the power of his predecessor. The Great Galeoto (1874) has per- 
haps a more universal appeal than any of the rest of his plays, 
handling the theme of the irreparable harm done by idle gossip. 
Lady Gregory's Spreading the News uses the same idea in a tumul- 
tuous one-act comedy. As an example of well sustained and cumu- 
lative suspense, Echegaray's Madman or Saint (1877) is excellent, 
with the only proof of Lorenzo's claim to another name, and hence 
the proof of his sanity, destroyed early in the play and unknown to 
everyone except the audience. 

Benito Perez Galdos (1 845-1 920), chiefly a dramatist of his 
own novels, makes the action also generally turn on some point of 

[58] 



honor. The Grandfather (1904) depicts the psychological struggle 
of a man between adherence to the honor of a noble lineage and love 
for his illegitimate granddaughter, who loves him most and whom 
he also comes to prize most highly. The presence of unnatural 
soliloquies indicate how careless of modern dramatic technique 
is this Spanish dramatist. His greatest success, Electra, shows 
better dialogue, its heroine being saved supernaturally from a con- 
vent. 

Better craftsmen are Jacinto Benavente, Angel Guimera, 
and the Quintero brothers, their work being witty and careful, but 
perhaps with less evidence of genius than Echegaray and Galdos. 

Realism marks the Aurora and Crime of Yesterday of Joaquin Di- 
centa, but satire is dominant in the four-score dramas of Jacinto 
Benavente, many of which are of the Ibsen school, urging freedom 
from false or hypocritical ideals. Autumn Roses, derived from 
Dumas His, attempts to show that marriage entails a mutual giving 
up of prerogatives, while with heightened fancy Bonds of Interest 
uses the lighter aspects of love, introducing figures from the Italian 
comedy of masks. The epilogue of Fire Dragon is notable for an 
extraordinarily affecting scene. Prolific also are the collaborators, 
Serafin and Joaquin Quintero, who soon left the making of farces 
and operettas, and passed to more realistic plays ; but their work, 
as in the early days when they handled delicately and naturally 
material which had once been rough farce, has always been whole- 
some and simple. Their reflection of Andalusian manners is 
paralleled by Angel Guimera's portrayal of Catalonian customs. 
First dominated by French romanticism and Shakespeare, he felt 
the Ibsen influence in such plays as The Young Queen; but more 
effective are his Maria Rosa, made famous abroad by the Sicilian 
players, and another drama of common life, Marta of the Lowlands, 
which deals with the struggles of a beggar-girl with her wicked and 
powerful master. Less rugged but graceful and charming is the 
work of Gregorio Sierra in The Cradle Song, which shows the 
impossibility of crushing maternal desires in a convent, and of 
Santiago Rusinol in The Mystic, which draws the soul of a priest. 
With some exceptions, the drama of Spain must be regarded as too 
exclusively theatrical, too artificial in its attitude towards life, just 
as the Italian stage for the most part is prevailingly sensational, 
exhibiting an excessive fondness for melodrama. 



59 



PART VIII 

British Drama 

From the time of Sheridan and Goldsmith to the beginnings of 
the "new drama" about 1880, the English stage was indeed arid. 
This poverty of English drama was due in part to the lack of any- 
just copyright law which would prevent British producers from com- 
peting against native dramatists with translations of current 
French successes at the cost of a mere pittance ; in part to the lack 
of a government subsidy which would ensure the financial support 
of a repertory system similar to that in vogue in France, or the tra- 
ditional patronage of the Court like that in the capital cities of the 
German provinces; and in part to the devastating effect of the 
censorship which persisted from the time of Sir Robert Walpole, 
through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Fostered 
by the smugness of the Victorian era, this anarchistic institution 
kept from the British stage for more than a century any play which 
truly reflected the progressive thought of England. 

There were, it is true, plays like Sheridan-Knowles' Virginius 
and Bulwer-Lytton's Richelieu which kept alive the romantic tra- 
dition; there were the hundred and twenty-four plays of Dion 
Boucicault who revised Rip Van Winkle for Joseph Jefferson and 
wrote many of his dramas on American soil ; there was evidence of 
the awakening social conscience in Robertson's Caste ; there were 
the still inimitable comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; and 
there were the poetic dramas of Tennyson and Browning, partially 
successful on the stage only because of the skill of actors like Irving 
and Macready. In Stephen Phillips we have again the attempt of 
a poet to compete with playwrights, with the style again overshad- 
owing action. The limitations of poetic drama today are more in 
evidence than its excellencies, even the very effective American 
verse play of Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. Marks), The Piper, 
which won the Stratford Shakespeare prize, verging at times on the 
poetic rather than the truly dramatic. 

But contemporary British drama rests really upon the work of 
Wilde, Jones, and Pinero. Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) writing arti- 

[60] 



ficial comedy of rare ingenuity of plot and with epigrammatic dia- 
logue the hard brilliance of which is in striking contrast to the warm 
human charm of Barrie, produced four important plays which 
influenced such men as Barker, Shaw and Hankin. In The Impor- 
tance of Being Earnest he raises the farce to the level of literature. 
Lady Windermere' s Fan has stood the test of time because in spite 
of its characteristic encrustation of witty sayings it is at base a good 
story. 

Of his somewhat morbid tragedies, Salome is the best known. This 
study of an inherited perversion is frequently interrupted for the 
interjection of purely decorative passages like those in which Herod 
describes at length his jewels and his peacocks, yet these by sheer 
contrast increase the horror. The scene of Salome's wooing of the 
prophet is revolting, and when as a climax to her successive appeals 
to touch his white body, his black hair, and his red mouth, she gets 
his severed head and kisses it upon the lips, we are viewing the 
actions of a congenital pervert. The nature setting, in spite of the 
morbid beauty of the words that enhance it, only adds to the repul- 
sion; the moon itself is horrible here. Sudermann's treatment of 
the same story, in John the Baptist, is saner, more idealistic, and 
better proportioned in its focussing of the high lights on John. 
Yet Wilde's play is unquestionably the more dramatic and power- 
ful ; it has held the European stage for twenty years. 

With far more plays to their credit than Wilde, Pinero and Jones 
represent the school of French farce and popular melodrama rather 
than the new influences that have come into the theatre; but the 
later works of both show increasing expertness in craftsmanship 
and a deeper grasp of character portrayal. 

Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (1855- ) especially, in his admir- 
able final phase, has given us some masterly pictures of our contem- 
poraries. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is the first of a series of 
portraits by his careful hand of the neurotic modern woman, a 
study which he was to perfect in Iris, and in Zoe Blundel in Mid- 
Channel. One thinks instinctively of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler when 
seeing Paula Tanqueray, and there are many points of contact 
between Paula and Dunstan Renshaw of Pinero 's earlier play, The 
Profligate. In both plays "the future is only the past again, entered 
through another gate," as Paula puts it; but in one it is the erring 
man, in the other, the sinful woman. The Thunderbolt, excellent for 

[61 ] 



its middle-class characterizations, is built up freshly around the 
familiar device of a destroyed will. The dialogue here is very life- 
like, full of repetitions and broken sentences. The Notorious Mrs. 
Ebbsmith has points of resemblance to Ibsen's Rosmersholm, depict- 
ing as it does the failure of Platonic relations. His House in Order 
was an earlier study of a family group, but more conventional than 
The Thunderbolt. The lighter side of Pinero is to be found in the 
sentimental comedy, Sweet Lavendar, which first brought him fame, 
in farces like The Magistrate, and in the smart French types like 
Trelawney of the Wells and The Gay Lord Quex. 

Henry Arthur Jones (1851- ), with even more plays to his 
credit than Pinero, has few outstanding dramas, though personally 
he has done much for the betterment of contemporary English 
drama. Clinging to the older traditions of the stage, like Pinero, he 
has done excellent work in high comedy. Michael and His Lost 
Angel is his most distinctive work of genius, but unlike his usual 
comedy of manners, of which The Liars is a fine example. The 
Divine Gift is an interesting study of genius. The Silver King writ- 
ten in collaboration with Henry Herman, is an excellent melodrama 
with a world-wide fame; Saints and Sinners was highly praised 
by Matthew Arnold; and Mrs. Dane's Defence contains an admir- 
able cross-examination scene. 

The conventional mind and art of Pinero and Jones seem super- 
ficial indeed before the plain nobility of truth in Galsworthy's 
work or the penetrating satire of Shaw. 

George Bernard Shaw (1856- ) is a disturbing force with 
his drama of ideas because of the sharpness of his Celtic wit and the 
clearness of his social analysis. Delighting in attacking the com- 
fortable and respectable conceptions of morality and manners, he 
often puts more of value into his penetrative prefaces than in the 
plays themselves. But with his skill the most philosophical and 
critical passages in the play succeed in amusing the audience. 

Widowers 1 Houses (1892) shows the universality of tainted money, 
with its reactions upon morality and character. The Devil's Disciple 
(1899), upon a background of our Revolutionary War, shows a man 
acting with instinctive heroism, in marked distinction to his Puri- 
tan relatives who have branded him as an outcast. Caesar and Cleo- 
patra (1899) depicts the Roman conqueror as a natural human 

[62] 



being, while The Man of Destiny (1897) reveals even more humor- 
ously how Napoleon was the product of his time, place, and birth. 
Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893) shows a daughter overcoming ele- 
ments of her maternal inheritance because of the disgust with which 
she views her mother's means of livelihood. Candida (1897) is an 
absorbing picture of a pure and mother-hearted woman, who plays 
havoc with the usual conventions of the triangle situation, some- 
what like Barrie in What Every Woman Knows. Man and Superman 
(1905), perhaps Shaw's most signal work of genius, emphasizing the 
impersonal, evolutionary aspects of love, with woman as the pur- 
suing mate, is scarcely more important than Major Barbara (1905), 
with its sound philosophy as to the necessity of eradicating pover- 
ty before humanity can save its soul. The Doctor' s Dilemma (1906), 
aside from its delicious satire upon all branches of the medical pro- 
fession, contains a study of the genius comparable with Ibsen's 
and Hauptmann's. Misalliance (1910), with a masterly preface on 
the proper training of children, deals dramatically with similar mat- 
ters. In The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Shakespeare is observed as 
the shapper-up of other people's unconsidered verbal trifles. 
This play is pertinent in the light of Shaw's own remarks that he 
could write a better play than the master-Elizabethan! 

Shaw's chief value lies not in his clever witticisms ; those we can 
find in the glittering hardness of Wilde's comedies. He is fighting 
for the victory of rationalism over stupidity, of reality over senti- 
mentalistic romance. He seeks to make us laugh at our false 
ideals in order that we may replace them with sound and sensible 
standards. A didactic purpose is at the root of every play of his, 
however much we may be deceived for the moment by the flashes 
of fun. 

John Galsworthy (1867- ), equally dexterous as novelist, 
essayist, and dramatist, presents plays of sociological import. 
Sympathetically analyzing certain defects in our social structure, 
he takes the humanitarian's attitude in Strife, Justice, and The 
Pigeon, but without becoming partisan like Shaw or crudely didac- 
tic like Brieux. He is always the artist. There is, to use Noyes' 
phrase, something of the "splendor of the indifference of God" in 
the impartiality with which he presents both sides of the problem 
in Strife, while his illuminating characterizations in The Pigeon 
are even more incisive than Pinero's most mature delineations, 

[63 1 



with an appealing emotional quality lacking in the logical and witty 
intellectualizations of Shaw. 

The Silver Box was an early treatment of a similar theme in 
Justice, in which society's treatment of the criminal is more widely 
studied. Strife is a dramatic setting forth of the claims of capital 
and labor during the progress of a strike. In The Pigeon he gives 
us a remarkable study of the socially unfit, the prostitute, the 
drunkard, and the tramp. In The Fugitive he shows a case of incom- 
patibility in marriage, with the ensuing disaster to the abandoned 
wife. A Bit 6* Love presents a minister who learns the bitter lesson 
that Christian forgiveness is impracticable in our social usage, 
while The Mob (1914) had to be discontinued when the Great War 
began because it was too poignant a portrayal of the feelings of the 
pacifist. 

Sir James Barrie (i860- ). Notable for their whimsical 
charm and sly humor, both the plays and novels of this Scotch 
writer are in a class all their own. With his gift of sympathetic 
interpretation of the human heart he has also an expert technique, 
which puts him in the first rank. His stage directions supply for the 
reader, even more than those of Shaw and Barker, a personal and 
imaginative quality which give to the plays almost the advantage 
of stage presentation. Their literary merit is equal to the dialogue 
itself. In his use of pantomime also Barrie surpasses his contempo- 
raries; like the wordless cell-scene in Galsworthy's Justice, no 
word is needed to convey the meaning in two of the best scenes of 
his two best plays, The Admirable Crichton and What Every Woman 
Knows. At the end of the second act of the earlier play (1902), since 
the butler, who has just been dismissed for arrogance, cannot leave 
the desert island- on which the whole party has been wrecked, the 
others leave him. His savory stew, however, overcomes their class 
distinctions, and they all creep back one by one to the camp-fire, 
where he is still master. No word is spoken; none is needed. 
What Every Woman Knows (1908) opens with a chess game, which 
serves to bring out essential characteristics of the two players with- 
out the need of words. Such delineation by facial expression would, 
of course, have been impossible before the introduction of adequate 
stage lighting. Barrie's inimitable fancy is revealed characteristi- 
cally in the fairy play Peter Pan, which has had such a wide appeal 
to the child-hearted everywhere. In its revelation of child psychol- 

[64] 



ogy it is unique. This quality of make-believe is also a dominant 
trait in The Legend of Leonora (19 13) and A Kiss for Cinderella 
(1916). Dear Brutus (1919) gives us a modernized Puck (Cf. A 
Midsummer Night's Dream), with an underlying strain of fatalism. 

H. Granville Barker (1877- )» actor-manager, dramatist, 
and play-producer, is a realist who, making his plays more exactly 
like life than Galsworthy, achieves less success upon the stage, 
probably for that reason. Echoing Shaw in his conception of love 
as the Life Force, he argues in The Madras House for as frank an 
acceptance of its importance by western civilization as by the East; 
and in Waste he laments the wanton destruction by society's ban of 
a great man who was temporarily overcome by its power. His 
stage directions have the same novelistic chattiness as Shaw's. 
Like Pinero in The Thunderbolt, Barker takes occasion to ridicule 
in The Voysey Inheritance the average middle-class English home 
where the ideal held is "that you should respect your parents, live 
with them, grow like them" ; but the theme of the play is the moral 
struggle between an unscrupulous man of business and his inex- 
perienced son who is to carry on the business, and who does so after 
the manner of the father but with an honest motive. His comedies 
are formless in the conventional sense, having neither a beginning, 
middle, nor end, the audience sometimes keeping their seats after 
the final curtain in the expectation of another act; but he attains, 
nevertheless, an acute and penetrating criticism of life, with 
admirable characterizations. In Prunella, he attempts poetic and 
symbolic drama, with considerable success. 

Arnold Bennett (1867- ), notable as a novelist, has contrib- 
uted a few plays to the body of English drama, but perhaps his 
most distinctive effort is the collaboration with Edward Knoblauch 
in Milestones, which portrays three generations in three successive 
acts, each passing from youthful initiative to the conservatism of age. 

Stephen Phillips (1868-19 15) marks about the last consistent 
attempt of the later English drama to produce poetic plays of the 
conventional type, but these plays have been only partially success- 
ful on the stage. His subjects are classical or historical — Paolo 
and Francesca (1899), Herod (1900), Ulysses (1902), The Sin of 
David (1904), Nero (1906), Faust (1908), etc., — and hence not alto- 

[65] 



gether appealing to modern audiences. He did, however, shorten 
the cast of characters usually found in poetic plays written on the 
Shakespearean model, and simplified the plot; but it must be admit- 
ted that he lacked the genuine dramatic instinct to make the most 
of his situations. 

John Masefield (1874- ), the poet, has created a great 
tragedy in The Tragedy of Nan (1908), a play of rare beauty, pathos, 
and pitiless cruelty, with none of the archaic dramatic technique of 
Phillips. His singularly effective dialogue of broken and repetitive 
prose is perhaps the most striking technical feature of the play. 
Powerful also is the prose of his Tragedy of Pompey the Great (1910). 
Philip the King and Good Friday are also in dramatic form, but are 
historical poems rather than plays. 

St. John Hankin (1 860-1909). For original and valuable com- 
ment on life, with a charm that is distinctive, The Return of the Prod- 
igal (1905) amd The Cassilis Engagement (1907) place their author 
in a category with Shaw, whose method was also strikingly uncon- 
ventional. Githa Sowerby's masterpiece, Rutherford and Son 
(1912) ranks among the powerful plays that deal with the relation 
of parents and children, like Barker's The Voysey Inheritance, Stan- 
ley Houghton's The Younger Generation (1910) and Hindle Wakes 
(1912), Bennett's Milestones, and John O. Francis' Welsh play 
Change (1913). Cf. also Magda. Elizabeth Baker in Chains 
(1909) rivals the static plays of Maeterlinck, but with dull, unpre- 
tentious, humdrum clerks for personages. Israel Zangwill has 
voiced American democracy and racial antipathies in The Melting 
Pot (1908). Charles Rann Kennedy uses reincarnation in The 
Servant in the House and retells the story of the crucifixion in The 
Terrible Meek. 

Irish Drama 

William Butler Yeats (1865- ), with Lady Augusta 
Gregory (1859- ), and George Moore (1857- ), founded 
the Irish Literary Theatre, and was a leader in the Irish dramatic 
Renaissance. With them is associated their greatest genius, John 
Millington Synge ( 1 871-1909), who chronicled so faithfully the 
peasantry of the Aran Islands. Yeats desired to revive the legends 

[66] 



and literature of ancient Ireland, and has done so delicately and 
subjectively in such plays as The Land of Heart's Desire, with its 
fairy lore, The Countess Cathleen (1899), with its mystical element 
comparable to Maeterlinck's early work, Kathleen ni Houlihan 
(1902), with its personification of suffering Ireland, and Deirdre 
(1906), with its historical personages. 

Synge's Riders to the Sea is a one-act masterpiece, a tragedy for 
all time, full of the finest prose-poetry and most poignant pathos, 
while In the Shadow of the Glen, taking the familiar triangle situa- 
tion, is irresistibly humorous. His Playboy of the Western World is 
in a class by itself, with its unforgettable revelation of Celtic 
characteristics and its lines of singularly musical prose. 

Lady Gregory excels in fine native comedy, her Spreading the 
News unrivalled in its humor, suspense, characterization, and 
criticism of idle gossip. (Cf. Echegaray's The Great Galeoto). 
The Travelling Man is a modern miracle play, while The Workhouse 
Ward depicts admirably two quarrelsome old men. 

T. C. Murray's (1873- ) Birthright (19 10) is one of the best 
of the realistic plays of the Irish group, with its masterly presenta- 
tion of a tragic family struggle. 

St. John G. Ervine (1883- ) tempers his realism with a mellow 
wisdom and humor, Mixed Marriage (191 1) being a moving tragedy 
of religious strife in the north of Ireland, while John Ferguson (1919) 
is equally powerful in its delineation of family characteristics. 

Rutherford Mayne, William Boyle, and Lennox Robinson 
also have the objective temperament, somewhat lacking in the 
more visionary Yeats, which can project everyday humanity upon 
the stage. Lord Dunsany's extraordinary imagination bodies 
forth gods and Fate and ancient lands that never were, in such 
brief tours de force as The Gods of the Mountain, A Night at an Inn, 
and The Glittering Gate. 

LESSON XX 

A. Required reading: Excursus on Italian, Spanish, and British drama: 

pp. 55-67 ; Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. 

B. Optional: D'Annunzio's Gioconda, Echegaray's The Great Galeoto; 

Chandler's: 65-70, 105-110145-47, 315-320; I33~i39- 

Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) is not intended as a serious or sympa- 
thetic comment on life, but it has qualities nevertheless that enable it to 

[67] 



stand the test of time : its wit, its decorative passages, its skilful technique, 
its effectiveness as a story. The artificial social atmosphere is created very 
deftly, as in the characterizations of Agatha and Mr. Dumby. But in 
The Importance of Being Earnest there is still better motivation, more natural 
dialogue, and greater skill in leading up to climaxes. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What general characteristics differentiate the Spanish and Italian 
drama? 

2. Why was the Victorian era an arid one for the English stage? 

3. Why is the work of Pinero and Jones less representative of the con- 
temporary stage than that of Galsworthy and Shaw? 

4. Is it probable that Lord Windermere would give money to his wife's 
mother secretly? 

5. Does the "Believe what you choose about me" speech in the third act 
ring true? Why (not)? 

6. Does Lady Windermere's character undergo a change during the 
course of the play? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is sympathy aroused for any of the characters in this play? 

2. What instances are there of the author's skill in preparing for an 
effective scene? 

3. Is the title effective? Trace the use that is made of the fan. 

{b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Lucio's defense of his position in Gioconda with that of Rubek 
in When We Dead Awaken. 

2. Note the exposition here. What is there in the first act that fore- 
shadows the end? Is the last act an anti-climax? 

3. Cf. the theme of The Great Galeoto with that of Lady Gregory's 
Spreading the News. Which is the more effectively presented? 

4. Cf. the work of D'Annunzio and Echegaray. 

5. Cf. D'Annunzio's Francesca da Rimini with Maeterlinck's Pelleas 
and Melisande. 

LESSON XXI 

A. Required reading: Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Chandler: 

pp. I39-H5, 173-176. 

B. Optional: Pinero's Mid-Channel. 

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), one of the most powerful plays of 
the present-day stage, exhibits a relentless logic and an admirable construc- 
tive skill. The inevitableness of the suicide of Paula is comparable with 

[681 



Pinero's later play, Mid-Channel, where the tragic ending is similarly glimpsed 
from the beginning. The exposition of the first act is a masterpiece, accom- 
plishing much, yet naturally and casually introduced. That of Mid-Channel 
is more compact but more conventional. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What are the causes of the tragedy in Mid-Channel? 

2. Is Iris the same sort of a woman as Paula? 

3. Can you find any unnatural exits or entrances in The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray? 

4. Is Ellean's attitude really at fault? Could she have averted the 
tragedy? 

5. Would a "happy ending" here have been logically possible? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is it merely the past that overwhelms Paula? Why could she not 
have been happy? Suppose Ardale had not appeared, what then? 

2. Does Pinero seem needlessly pessimistic in his view of sexual errors? 

3. Cf. the raisonneur, Peter Mottram, in Mid-Channel with Cayley 
Drummle in this play and with Hilary Jesson in His House in Order. 

4. Which is stronger in this play, the intellectual or the emotional 
appeal? Cf. in this respect Hervieu's Know Thyself. 

5. Cf. the steps leading to Paula's suicide with the motivation of 
Falder's suicide in Justice. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Paula with Hedda Gabler. 

2. Cf. Paula with Zoe in Mid- Channel. 

3. Why is it that we feel more sympathy for Paula than for Hedda 
and less than for Zoe? 

4. Cf. the steps leading to Zoe's suicide with those preceding Paula's 
and Hedda Gabler's and Falder's. Is there an equal sense of 
inevitability in all? 

5. Is Theo's position inconsistent in refusing his wife the same for- 
giveness that she affords him? Cf. Bjornson's The Gauntlet. 

LESSON XXII 

A. Required reading : Pinero's His House in Order: Chandler; pp. 188-190, 

196-197, 219-221. 

B. Optional: Pinero's The Thunderbolt. 

His House in Order (1906) is not on the same level with The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray, but it is effective and possessed of a more cheerful philosophy. 

[69] 



It is a family study, an early draft of what Pinero was to accomplish in the 
masterly depiction of character in The Thunderbolt. Here, the members of 
the Ridgeley family are caricatured rather than photographed, and the fine 
differentiations between them are not attempted. In The Thunderbolt 
Pinero comes very near the vivid observational power of Barker in his family 
study, The Voysey Inheritance. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Outline the plot. 

2. Is Nina at fault in her conduct? 

3. Is it probable that the incriminating letters would have been left as 
they were? 

4. What is the significance of the title? 

5. How does Pinero keep The Thunderbolt from becoming banal? There 
is nothing new in the plot. 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. the method of Pinero with that of Ibsen or Rostand. 

2. How would D'Annunzio have treated this theme? 

3. What would Tchekhov or Maeterlinck have done with it? 

4. Cf. the exposition here with that of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. 

(6) From the optional reading: 

1. Indicate how this play would have been done by D'Annunzio. 

2. How would Maeterlinck have treated it? 

3. Differentiate the various members of the Mortimore family as 
minutely as possible. 

4. In what respects is the dialogue an improvement upon that of The 
Second Mrs. Tanqueray? Do you see any of the influence of Mae- 
terlinck in the frequency of repeated phrases? 

LESSON XXIII 

A. Required reading: Jones' Michael and His Lost Angel; Chandler: pp. 

147-162. 

B. Optional: Lewisohn's The Modern Drama: pp. 166-192. 

Michael and His Lost Angel (1896), Jones' most ambitious play, is a 
tragedy of passion quite unlike his customary satiric comedies. It was not, 
however, a success upon the stage, though it still remains one of his best. 
Perhaps the difficulty is in the somewhat anomalous figure of Michael, who, 
as Shaw pointed out, tells Audrie he is not sorry because of their lapse from 
rectitude but who persists in acting as if he were. He is thus made to appear 
either hypocritical or a pathetic weakling. But the play makes us feel in 
the end that he is really contrite. 

[70] 



C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Set down in a column the plays mentioned in Chandler as having 
churchmen as heroes, and characterize each in a few words. 

2. Sum up the progress of the action in Michael act by act. 

3. Is Michael really sorry for his sin when he tells Audrie that he is not? 
If so, why does he say this to her? 

4. Does he seem heroic or weak? Why? 

5. Why, do you think, was this play not a success upon the stage? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1 . Did Michael deeply love Audrie, or v/as it only momentary passion? 

2. Would a "happy ending" have been logical? Can you suggest one? 

3. Why was the idea of public confession so firmly fixed in Michael's 
mind? Was it necessary for him to make one? Any alternative? 

4. Is the element of chance plausible here? Does it really account 
for the tragedy? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Why does Lewisohn attack Caste? 

2. Why does he call Pinero and Jones playwrights of the transition? 

3. What is their chief importance? 

4. Is his criticism of Michael too severe? 

5. Cf. the work of Pinero and Jones. 

6. Why does Lewisohn, while admitting a technical superiority in 
Pinero, insist upon an intrinsic cheapness? 

7. Why does he call W 7 ilde "a brief and curious interlude in the his- 
tory of the modern English drama"? 

LESSON XXIV 

A. Required reading: Jones' The Liars; Chandler: pp. 184-185. 

B. Optional: Jones' Mrs. Dane's Defense, The Divine Gift. 

The Liars (1897) is an excellent example of the comedy of manners. The 
plot is skilfully constructed, the dialogue, though not as clever as Shaw's or 
Wilde's, is nevertheless good, and the satire is keen but. not bitter. There 
is an ethical background to the action, to the effect that society must make 
for its preservation a set of conventions, and that adherence to these is 
necessary to avert social chaos. 

C. Questions for notebook : 

1. Outline the plot. 

2. Sketch briefly the leading characters. 

3. Are there any unnecessary characters? If so, who? Why? 

l7i] 



4. Who precipitates the final downfall? 

5. Does the last act sustain the interest? Is this act necessary? 

6. What is the theme of The Case of Rebellious Susan? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading : 

1. Cf. this play with Michael and His Lost Angel in characterization 
and depth of appeal. What striking differences appear? 

2. Which seems to have been written more from a personal experi- 
ence? 

3. Does Jones seem here to be caricaturing society or accurately rep- 
resenting its lighter phases? Point out any exaggerations. 

4. Cf. this play with Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. 

(b) From the optional reading : 

1. Comment on Cutler's view of art, in The Divine Gift. 

2. Cf. Cutler's view of love with that of Shaw in Man and Superman. 

3. What has Cutler's article on the Future of the Human Race to do 
with the plot? 

4. In Mrs. Dane's Defense why is the cross-examination scene so 
effective? 

5. Cf. this scene with some of the court-room scenes already read. 
Would this one gain by being set in a court? Why (not)? 

6. Cf. Michael with Rosmer of Rosmersholm. Cf. Audrie with Ros- 
mer's "lost angel", Rebecca West. 

LESSON XXV 

A. Required reading: Shaw's Candida; Chandler: pp. 116-119, 150-151. 

B. Optional : Shaw's Widowers' Houses. 

Candida (1897) contains as its basis the familiar "triangle situation," but 
the treatment is not at all conventional. Like Barrie's What Every Woman 
Knows, it is saved from tragedy by the tolerance, sympathy, and sense of 
humor of the wife, who applies the test of common sense to a situation 
usually abounding in infidelity, bathos, and high-sounding sentiment. There 
is a similarly refreshing sanity about Sudermann's treatment of this situa- 
tion in The Vale of Content, where also the romantic point of view yields to 
the rationalistic. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What is it that prevents this play from having the usual tragic out- 
come? 

2. What is it that strips the conventionality and sentimentalism from 
both the husband and the poet? 

[72] 



3. What is it that governs Candida's point of view and her conduct? 

4. Is Marchbanks really in love with Candida? 

5. How does she cure him of his love, real or fancied? 

6. Why does not Candida or her husband know "the secret that is in the 
poet's heart"? What is that secret? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. How would D'Annunzio have treated this theme? Maeterlinck? 

2. Is Candida a type of the "new" woman or the old? 

3. What is the basis of her final decision? Is it sound? 

4. If Candida ceased to love her husband would she stay with him? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What is Shaw's position as to society's responsibility for poverty? 

2. Is charity beneficial to the destitute, according to this play? 

3. Is the compromise of Dr. Trench reasonable? 

4. Analyze the defence of Sartorius for his policy, and consider 
whether it is morally sound. 

5. Notice the love-passages in the play and compare them with those 
in Pelleas and Melisande. Which is the greater art? Which is 
truer to reality? 

LESSON XXVI 

A. Required reading: Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra; Chandler :pp. 398-410. 

B. Optional: Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. 

Caesar and Cleopatra (1899) satirizes our romantic misconceptions of 
the hero. The Julius Caesar of this play is a much more humanized figure 
than Shakespeare's, but he is also represented as a younger man. This 
Caesar is in his prime, has a sense of humor, and exhibits qualities of the true 
superman. He is also susceptible to flattery, frankly egoistic, a creature of 
instinct; but his instincts are sound. Shaw's Caesar is not melodramatic 
like his Napoleon in The Man of Destiny, nor a snapper-up of other people's 
unconsidered trifles like his Shakespeare in The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What type of satirist is Shaw? 

2. In what way does Caesar's soliloquy before the Sphinx align him 
with Stockmann in An Enemy of the People? 

3. Is duty, or virtue, or self-expression the motive of Caesar's conduct? 

4. Has Cleopatra the same motive? 

5. Why does Caesar not believe in revenge? 

[73] 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Characterize Cleopatra. Is she a Circe or a child? 

2. How does Britannus represent British characteristics? 

3. Cf. Caesar as a type of the genius with Ibsen's treatment of him 
in The Master Builder. 

4. Cf. the treatment of Caesar by Shaw and Shakespeare. 

5. What is the ruling instinct of Dick Dudgeon, Blanco Posnet, and 
Captain Brassbound? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Characterize General Burgoyne. 

2. Is the minister's wife in love with Dick? 

3. Is he in love with her? 

4. What is wrong with the religion of Dick's family? 

5. Is Dick religious? 

6. Is the historical background accurate? 

LESSON XXVII 

A. Required reading: Shaw's Man and Superman; Chandler: pp. 302, 

410-421. 

B. Optional: Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma. 

Man and Superman (1905) contains Shaw's most direct statement that 
love is not personal and romantic, but instinctive and cosmic. All the sub- 
terfuges of modern mating and love-making are stripped bare, the 
dramatist contending that the "life force" exists to fulfill the purposes of 
Nature, which is to develop a higher order of intelligence than exists even in 
man: a race of Supermen. In this process man is the more passive instru- 
ment; it is woman who assumes the initiative, being imbued instinctively 
with a greater determination to perpetuate the race, and seeking therefor a 
proper father for her children, however that desire may be veiled by her own 
unconsciousness or by the dictates of custom. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What is the relevancy of Act III, the scene in Hell? 

2. What arguments from science does he introduce into the play? 

3. Why does he compare the artist with the mother? 

4. What is the Life Force? 

5. Does the play have a "happy ending"? How does it differ from the 
usual last act of comedy? 

6. Do you note a particularly different quality in the stage directions? 

7. What is Shaw's idea of Hell? 

8. Does he repudiate sentiment and romance? 

9. Is he in earnest? 

[74] 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is there a parallel between Don Juan and John Tanner? 

2. Is Ann unwomanly? Cf. her with Shakespeare's comedy heroines, 
who also take the lead in love. Is Ann consciously pursuing? 

3. How does she illustrate Shaw's contention of woman as the pre- 
destined mother, relentless in pursuit of her "marked down quarry"? 

4. Is Tanner's attitude towards the sister of Octavius in Act I 
defensible? 

5. Is a critic justified in regarding this play as an attack on marriage 
or as an argument for free love? Give adequate reasons. 

6. Is the action of the play spoiled by its dissertations? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What is the dilemma that faces the doctor? 

2. Is his solution morally justifiable? On what grounds? 

3. Cf. Louis Dubedat with Caesar. Is his conduct defensible? 

4. Is his death funny? What makes it different from the usual 
death scene? Is it more effective? 

5. Cf. the different doctors. Which is the best man among them? 
Which doctor would you engage? Why? 

LESSON XXVIII 

A. Required reading: Shaw's Major Barbara; Chandler: pp. 346-349. 

B. Optional: Lewisohn's The Modern Drama: pp. 192-217. 

Major Barbara (1905) is named after the Salvation Army girl who is 
the leading figure here, the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire 
cannon-maker. With his gospel of money and gunpowder, he considers 
himself only the instrument of a Will or Life Force which uses him for pur- 
poses wider than his own. The question of tainted money, which occurred 
in Widowers' Houses, appears again. In the final union of Undershaft, 
Cusins, and Barbara, we have symbolized the three-fold aspect of human 
life, its physical, mental and spiritual elements, without a harmonious fusion 
of which there can be no permanence or peace. Whether in each individual 
or in society as a whole, salvation must marry wisdom and take over the 
things that heretofore have destroyed life: love and fine thinking, to use 
Mr. Wells' apt phrase, can only be the children of power. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Why is it that Undershaft perpetuates the tradition of his business 
in handing it on, not to his son, but to Cusins? 

2. Is it true that Barbara blasphemes when she exclaims "My God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" 

[75] 



3. Is Shaw unfair to the Salvation Army in this play? 

4. What is the gist of the plot? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Criticise Undershaft's philosophy. 

2. Cf. the reactions of poverty upon society as argued here with the 
presentation in Hauptmann's The Weavers. Why does Shaw call 
poverty a crime? 

3. Is charity beneficial to the destitute? Cf. Galsworthy's The 
Pigeon. 

4. Cf. Undershaft's remarks about obsolete moralities with Stock- 
mann's views, in An Enemy of the People, about the duration of 
truths. 

5. Analyze Undershaft's attack upon duty and humility. Is it valid? 

6. How does he refute the common argument that the more awful 
war is made, the sooner it will be abolished? How does he prove 
that men are naturally destructive rather than constructive? 
Cf. with the Devil's argument in Man and Superman. 

7. Is Undershaft a likable figure? Is Cusins a weak character? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1 . Cf . the use made of tainted money in Major Barbara with that in 
Widowers' Houses. 

2. How does Undershaft compare with John Gabriel Borkman? 

3. Why does Lewisohn rank Shaw, Barker, and Galsworthy so high? 

LESSON XXIX 

A. Required reading: the Prefaces to Shaw's Man and Superman and Major 

Barbara. 

B. Optional: Henderson's The Changing Drama: chap, viii, pp. 221-251. 

PREFACES to Shaw's Man and Superman and Major Barbara. 
In his prefaces, Mr. Shaw, while still inclined to exaggerate for the sake of 
an effective paradox or a witty satirical thrust, may be expected to be fairly 
sincere. Some critics have felt that the prefaces are sometimes more valu- 
able than the plays themselves. The philosophy is often more directly 
stated here than in the plays, but it is a question which is the more effective 
statement of the idea. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Do you find any discrepancies between the point of view of the pre- 
face and that of the play? Which do you feel is the more effective 
presentation of the idea? 

[76] 






2. Why is the preface of Man and Superman in the form of a letter? 

3. Does the long stage direction at the opening of the third act of Man 
and Superman belong properly there, or, in large part, in the preface? 

4. Cf. in Major Barbara Undershaft's analysis of himself with that of 
Shaw in the preface. Which is the clearer portrait? 

5. These plays exist for the sake of the ideas they contain. Has Shaw 
succeeded, nevertheless, in creating vivid, living characters to em- 
body these ideas? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. the humor and satire of the prefaces with those qualities in 
the plays. 

2. Why does Shaw say that "the bubble of heredity has been pricked"? 
Has it? What evidence does he give? Is it sufficient? 

3. What is your personal estimate of Shaw as a satirist? 

4. Why is it that people in general do not take Shaw seriously? Is it 
their fault or his? 

5. Do you feel that Shaw is in earnest? Do you believe that his 
views are sound? Be specific. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. In what respects has the reader been taken into account in the 
publishing of plays since Ibsen? 

2. How has this reacted on the dramatists themselves? 

3. How has it affected the actor? 

4. What has it done for the reader? 

5. What has it done for the stage in general? 

LESSON XXX 

A. Required reading: Galsworthy's Strife; Chandler: pp. 86, 127, 225, 

324-325, 349-354- 

B. Optional: Ervine's Mixed Marriage. 

Strife (1909) is a study of industrial relations of the rich and poor, speci- 
fically of a strike in the Trenartha Tin Plate Works. It is the fullest state- 
ment in the theatre of an industrial problem, with the spaciousness of Haupt- 
mann's The Weavers and the impartiality of an intellect detached from emo- 
tion. Weighing the arguments of both sides in a highly judicial manner, 
Galsworthy is able to present the issues involved with clearness and power. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

I. Is there a definite struggle of wills here or only a deadlock caused by 
general conditions? 

[77] 



2. Is there any remedy proposed? 

3. In what does the irony of the conclusion consist? 

4. What are the themes of The Little Dream, The Fugitive, Joy, The 
Eldest Son, The Strike at Arlingford, Lynggaard and Company? 

5. Is Galsworthy interested in any moral or thesis here? What seems 
to be his purpose in writing the play? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Are strikes justifiable? Illustrate from the four plays considered 
(Chandler: pp. 349-354.) Are they productive of any good? 

2. To what extent should employers co-operate with their employees? 

3. What compromise could have been made here to avert tragedy? 

4. Are Anthony and Roberts equally unselfish? 

5. Cf. this play with The Weavers. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Characterize Mrs. Rainey as completely as possible. 

2. Cf. this picture of a family with one of Pinero's. 

3. What is there about Ervine's method that rings truer to life than 
Jones' or Pinero's? 

4. Is Rainey a tragic figure? Who is the leading figure here? 

5. Were Nora and Hugh right or wrong in their stand? 

LESSON XXXI 

A. Required reading : Galsworthy's Justice; Chandler: pp. 339-342. 

B. Optional: Sowerby's Rutherford and Son. 

Justice (1910) takes up the problem of society's attitude toward the 
criminal, especially the first offender. Falder is shown as a weak type, but 
not a criminal, though the law does not discriminate. In The Silver Box, 
Galsworthy had already touched upon this theme, being more interested 
there, however, in the discrimination of the law in favor of the culprit with 
money and influence. 

Questions for notebook: 

1. List the episodes of the play. 

2. Why is it that Falder commits suicide? Was there no alternative? 

3. How does the court scene, which repeats much of the information we 
already know, escape from tiresomeness? 

4. Note the wordless cell scene. Would dialogue have added anything 
here? Is it in any way different from a film drama? 

5. Who is the villain in this play? Is it anyone in the play? 

[78] 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

i. Is Falder primarily responsible for his crime? Where shall one 
draw the line of responsibility? 

2. Should leniency be shown first offenders? To what extent? 

3. Should penitentiaries be places of punishment or of moral educa- 
tion? How far are criminals to be treated as patients? Is crime 
a preventable disease? How far is it preventable? 

4. Cf. the restraint of this play with Brieux' method in The Red Robe. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What is the tragic defect in Rutherford? 

2. Are there resemblances between him and his three children? In 
what respects? Do these seem to be inherited? 

3. Cf. this family study with Barker's The Voysey Inheritance, 

4. Cf. this family study with Pinero's The Thunderbolt. 

LESSON XXXII 

A. Required reading: Galsworthy's The Pigeon; Chandler: pp. 344-346. 

B. Optional reading: Baker's Chains. 

The Pigeon (1912) is concerned with the philanthropic relations of the 
rich and poor, satirizing those theorists whose panaceas fail in the specific case 
before their eyes, and pleading with humor and sympathy for a better under- 
standing of the social misfit. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What does Brieux satirize in The Philanthropists'? 

2. Who is the hero of The Pigeon} Why? 

3. Would the defense of Falder by Hector Frome in Justice apply to 
Ferrand, Mrs. Megan, and Timson as well? Are they all congeni- 
tally unsuited for the struggle for existence? 

4. What is the significance of the time settings — Christmas Eve, New 
Year's Day, and the First of April? 

5. Note how the three types of the social outcast and ne'er-do-well are 
balanced by three different experts on professional charity — a clergy- 
man, a jurist, and a professor. What is the remedy proposed by each? 

6. Is Wellwyn's point of view any more salutary or satisfactory than 
theirs? 

7. Is any adequate solution for the problem presented by the author? 

8. Who is "the pigeon?" What is the significance of the term? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1 . Who is at fault here, the three social misfits or society's treatment 
of them? Note Ferrand's analysis of his own case. Is he fair? 

[79] 



2. Is Ferrand something more than a whimsical philosophical vaga- 
bond? Cf. Heinrich in The Sunken Bell, e.g. 

3. Note the under-emphasis, rather than over-emphasis, of theatric 
circumstances and scene-ends. Does this make for effectiveness? 
How would D'Annunzio or Maeterlinck have done them? 

4. Cf. Shaw's Major Barbara, so far as the theme of charity to the 
poor is concerned. 

(b) From the optional reading : 

1. What is the theme of this play? Is it essentially dramatic? 

2. Cf. this play with one of Jones. What constitutes the power of 
Miss Baker's work? 

3. Cf. this play with Miss Sowerby's Rutherford and Son. Is there 
as much local color and atmosphere here? 

4. Are there any outward evidences of the characters' inner struggle? 

5. What is the difference in method between this play and one of the 
static plays of Maeterlinck, like The Intruder or Interior! 

6. Cf. Ferrand's self-analysis with Dr. Relling's doctrine in The Wild 
Duck as to the need of illusion in life. 

7. Cf. Ferrand and Brand. 

LESSON XXXIII 

A. Required reading : Barrie's The Admirable Crichton; Chandler: pp.215, 
257-276. 

B. Optional: Masefield's The Tragedy of Nan. 

The Admirable Crichton (1902) is good literature as well as good 
drama, possessing that charm of style which is so characteristic of Barrie's 
writing in general. It is what the characters do rather than what they say 
that is the most effective; for example, when the butler exclaims "Bill Crich- 
ton's got to play the game," we are excited, but it is when he sets off the signal 
to the receding ship that the real climax comes. Similarly, in What Every 
Woman Knows, the most eloquent speech that Maggie makes is the moment 
when, without a word, she drops her knitting from her passive hands, its 
charm to soothe no longer effective. The play has been filmed under the 
title Male and Female, but some of the subtlety is necessarily lost; it does not 
have the Barrie touch. Note how economically the lapse of two years is 
indicated at the opening of Act III by the stage setting. Much is also told 
at the rise of the curtain on Shand's committee rooms in Glasgow, in What 
Every Woman Knows, by the posters and signs that indicate the achievement 
of his ambition. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What part does the setting play here? Is it indispensable? 

[80] 



2. What is it that subdues the party on the island to a more perfect 
equality? 

3. What quality is it in this play that will doubtless make it outlast 
many of its contemporaries? 

4. What is it that gives the butler his superiority on the island? Is he 
superior in the first and last acts also? 

5. Is there any falling off in the interest in this play, or is it cumulative? 

6. Are the characters more important than the plot? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Is the indeterminate ending satisfying? Will things go on exactly 
as before? Can you sketch out another act from the data at hand? 

2. How far can the policy of the brotherhood of man be applied to 
servants? Are artificial barriers of caste justifiable? 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What peculiarities of dialogue are there here? 

2. Is Nan a murderer? Is the figure of the old fiddler symbolic? 

3. What makes the play beautiful in spite of its sordidness? 

LESSON XXXIV 

A. Required reading: Barker's The Madras House; Chandler: pp. 57, 215- 

219, 223-227, 307-312. 

B. Optional: Barker's Waste, The Voysey Inheritance. 

The Madras House (1910), by means of a gallery of family portraits, 
satirizes business and sex quite in the manner of Shaw. Barker here sug- 
gests that the Oriental view of woman's place in the sexual scheme has some 
advantages. Like Strindberg, but with a jocularity foreign to "the terrible 
Swede," he points out the dangers attendant upon admitting woman to an 
equality with man, and at the same time exposes the Occidental cloaking of 
a common instinct under hypocritical conventions. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Note instances in the stage directions where the information con- 
veyed is primarily for the reader, not for the stage director. 

2. Are there any scenes here which, while having little to do with the 
action of the play, are actually superfluous? 

3. Can you take from the play one or more characters without making 
the play suffer? 

4. What do you think was the author's fundamental purpose in writing 
this play? 

5. Is the method that of the novel rather than that of the drama? 

6. What part have the costume models in the emphasis of the theme? 

[81] 



7. Is Edward Voysey's conduct right? On what grounds? 

8. How does Waste resemble Shaw's use of the Life Force? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. the quality of Barker's stage directions with that of Barrie 
and Shaw. 

2. Cf. the position of the six maiden daughters of the Huxtables 

with that of the Three Daughters of M. Dupont. 

3. Why does Constantine Madras regard the Mohammedan view of 
woman as franker and more manly? Cf. Strindberg's attitude. 

4. Cf. Barker's view of woman in this play with that of Shaw in 
Man and Superman. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. the picture of a family in The Madras House with that in The 
Voysey Inheritance. 

2. Cf. either with that of Pinero in The Thunderbolt. 

3. Cf. Christensen's argument in The Gauntlet with that of Constan- 
tine Madras. 

4. Of what value dramatically are the political discussions in Waste? 

5. Is Trebell's suicide made to seem inevitable? Be explicit. 

6. Why is Waste a great play? 

LESSON XXXV 

A. Required reading: (a) Yeats' The Hour -Glass, (b) Synge's Riders to the 

Sea, (c) Gregory's The Rising of the Moon; Chandler: pp. 233-256 
(pp. 257-276 were assigned as part of Lesson XXXIII). 

B. Optional : Yeats' Cathleen ni Hoolihan, Synge's In the Shadow of the Glen, 

Gregory's Spreading the News and The Travelling Man. 

(a) The Hour-glass (1903) is a morality play of the type of Everyman. 
The wise fool here is akin also to the kindly fool in King Lear. There are lines 
of real poetry here, and a subtle, evanescent quality that eludes analysis, 
due, perhaps, to Yeats' alleged contact with fairies. 

(b) Riders to the Sea (1904) is a tragic idyll, an unforgettable picture 
of the bereft mother. The strength, dignity, and noble poetry of the lan- 
guage of the simple people in this play give it high rank and a universal 
appeal. 

(c) The Rising of the Moon (1907) centers around a police sergeant who 
lets an escaped political prisoner go free. The atmosphere of the piece is 
well sustained, by such methods as focussing the attention upon the flight of 
steps that lead to the water. The idioms are quaint, like those of Yeats and 
Synge. 

[82] 






C. Questions for notebook: 

1. What are the three types of the new Irish drama? 

2. Why do the two old beggars in The Well of the Saints choose to remain 
blind? Cf. with Dr. Relling's observation in The Wild Duck that if 
if you "rob the average man of his illusions you rob him of his happi- 
ness at the same time." How does this play illustrate that saying? 

3. What is the philosophy that underlies the story (a)? 

4. Is there a plot here (b)? Who is the villain? Does he appear? 

5. What is responsible for the feeling of fate, of necessary and hopeless 
submission (b)? What is the nature of the dramatic struggle? 

6. Was the police sergeant foolish (c) ? Why (not) ? 

7. Does the interest and suspense increase to the climax (c)? 

8. Is this (c) a thesis play, a play of ideas? What constitutes the in- 
terest? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. the depiction of death (a) with Maeterlinck's and others. 

2. How do you account for the great peace that comes to Maurya (b) 
when she knows that her last son is dead? Is the psychology 
true to life? 

3. Cf. the work in general of Lady Gregory, Yeats, and Synge. 

4. Sum up the plays of Irish folk-history; the comedies of peasant life. 

(6) From the optional reading: 

1. Cf. Cathleen ni Hoolihan with other Irish plays of allegory. 

2. Cf. The Travelling Man with The Servant in the House. 

3. Cf. In the Shadow of the Glen with other plays dealing with the 
"triangle situation." 



[83] 



PART IX 

American Drama 

The first play written by an American to be performed profes- 
sionally in America was Thomas Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia 
(1767). This blank verse tragedy on the Elizabethan model had 
much less native atmosphere than Royall Tyler's comedy The Con- 
trast (1787), which introduced the "stage Yankee." William Dun- 
lap's Andre (1798) represents the native historical tragedy, of which 
Breckenridge's Battle of Bunker Hill was an earlier but more aca- 
demic type. Steele Mackaye (1 842-1 894) represents the transition 
from the older theatrical tradition to a more realistic type of play; 
important as a stage manager and an organizer of new dramatic 
ventures, he gives in Hazel Kirke (1880) a truer reflection of life 
than many that had preceded it, though the work of Dion Bouci- 
cault, the Irish-Englishman who wrote so many pieces for the 
American stage, is notable, especially in the slavery play, The 
Octoroon (1859), and in the revision of Joseph Jefferson's Rip Van 
Winkle, which was first produced in London, in 1865. But Bronson 
Howard (1842-1908) is generally considered to be the dean of the 
modern American stage, his Shenandoah (1889) being one of the 
best of the Civil War plays, and his The Henrietta (1887) still suc- 
cessful in a revised form. Howard discarded many of the older 
conventions of the theatre, which Boucicault permitted himself to 
use, dispensed with mere rhetoric, and was liberal in the use of 
humor, sentiment, and native characterizations. Cruder but effec- 
tive were the plays of Harrigan and Hart and Charles E. Hoyt; 
but more warmly cherished in the hearts of those who saw them 
were the skilful "way down East" plays, Denman Thompson's Old 
Homestead, and the simpler, more forceful melodramas of James A. 
Heme, Shore Acres and Sag Harbor. 

Augustus Thomas (1859- ) has gone west and south for his 
local color, Alabama, In Mizzoura, Arizona, and Colorado being 
excellent examples of the patriotic melodrama. Three of his more 

[84] 



serious dramas, The Witching Hour, As a Man Thinks, and The 
Harvest Moon, make use of a belief in mental telepathy, the second 
suffering from too many ideas, there being three main themes in the 
play. Skilful in reading the public mind, Thomas kept The Witching 
Hour for several years before producing it, waiting for public 
interest to be more fully awakened in the subject of mental phe- 
nomena. 

Clyde Fitch (i 865-1 909) has a long list of clever comedies to 
his credit, and his posthumous play, The City, attempts to analyze 
seriously certain morbid aspects of city life. From such studies of 
society as The Girl with the Green Eyes, with its portrayal of a tem- 
perament jealous by nature, he passed, in The Truth, to a similar 
study of the woman more or less congenitally incapable of telling the 
truth. His work is confined for the most part to picturing the life of 
the "upper classes" in New York City, but in Nathan Hale and 
Barbara Frietchie we get theatricalized history. 

William Vaughn Moody (1869-19 10), primarily a poet, wrote 
two effective plays, The Great Divide, which was very successful in 
spite of its sagging interest towards the end, and The Faith Healer, 
which though a failure was a highly creditable psychological study 
comparable to Bjornson's Beyond Our Power (I.). 

Percy Mackaye (1875- ), a poet with less insight into the 
demands for dramatic technique than Moody, has tried his hand at 
spectacles, like Caliban by the Yellow Sands; verse plays, like 
Jeanne d'Arc; fantastic tragedy, like The Scarecrow; satiric farce 
with an anti-Ibsen flavor, like Anti- Matrimony, eugenic drama, 
like Tomorrow, and historical fantasy, like A Thousand Years Ago. 

But a better verse play than any of Mackaye's, is Mrs. Lionel 
Marks' The Piper, which, though deserving the Stratford Shake- 
speare prize, has some of the lyrical and narrative defects of the 
"closet drama" type. 

William Gillette (1855- ) has written some admirable 
Civil War plays, in Secret Service (1896) and Held by the Enemy 
(1886), while Sherlock Holmes (1899) is an excellent detective play. 
Too Much Johnson (1894) 1S an equally effective farce. Technically 
even more expert is David Belasco, his best work aside from his 

[851 



many collaborations being The Return of Peter Grimm; but he is 
even more important for his extraordinary contributions to the 
mechanics of the present-day stage, his lighting effects, decoration, 
and accurate atmosphere always being carried to the highest pos- 
sible perfection. His methods influenced the productions of War- 
field, Ditrichstein, De Mille, and the late Charles Klein, whose 
The Music Master, with Warfield in the title role, had an enormous 
success. A similar journalistic manner is to be found in both 
Broadhurst's Bought and Paid For and Walter's Paid in Full and 
The Easiest Way, the latter play, reminiscent of Pinero's Iris, 
being one of the most important of the last decade. The simpler 
illusions of the newer men like Joseph Urban and Robert E. Jones, 
however, are away from the realistic minutiae of the Belasco school. 
The ingenious musical comedies, farces, and dramatizations of 
George M. Cohan reflect an important and popular side of Ameri- 
can life, while Edward Sheldon in Salvation Nell, The Nigger, and 
Romance aroused expectations which have not since been realized. 
Of the many other prominent and successful American dramatists 
it is still too early to predict whether their work entitles them to 
serious consideration, few of their plays being able to stand compar- 
ison with those of the Europeans because lacking in either the 
ability or the desire to depict actual life. But there is an increasing 
tendency to abandon the more superficial aspects, to face realities, 
and to make serious studies of contemporary character without the 
necessity of a forced "happy ending." 

LESSON XXXVI 

A. Required reading: Excursus on American drama: pp. 84-86; Augustus 
Thomas' The Witching Hour ; Chandler: pp. 93-100. 

B. Optional: Kennedy's The Servant in the House, Jerome's The Passing of 

the Third Floor Back. 
The Witching Hour (1907) deals with mental telepathy. In Mrs. 
Burnett's The Dawn of a Tomorrow there is exhibited the power of optimistic 
thought over untoward physical conditions; in Moody's The Faith Healer, 
Bjornson's Beyond Our Power (I), and Jones' Judah, the spiritual potency 
of love and faith is also set forth. Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor 
Back personifies the Better Self in each of the characters in the play in the 
person of the Stranger, while Kennedy in The Servant in the House reincar- 
nates the Christ in Manson the butler. In The Witching Hour the power 
of constructive thought is manifested in the case of a crime committed by a 

[861 






boy while under an hypnotic spell, that spell being permanently dissolved by 
the application of sound psychological principles. The freeing of Ellida from 
the fascination of the Stranger in The Lady from the Sea is somewhat anala- 
gous. The love scenes are restrained, yet there is a general tone of senti- 
mentality. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Note the casual quality of the opening dialogue. Why is it partic- 
ularly suited for a play dealing with strange phenomena? 

2. Why is the melodramatic form natural for the presentation of such 
ideas as Justice Prentice's "guessing" the price of the Corot, or Clay's 
superstition about Tom's scarf-pin and the resultant murder? 

3. How does heredity enter as a theme? 

4. Is Clay responsible for his murder of Tom Denning? Who is? 

5. Note the method of curing his inherited obsession. Is this happy 
ending logical and effective? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. What qualities of the average American play are visible here? 

2. Why was the play kept so long before being produced? What does 
this indicate as to the function of the dramatist? 

3. Cf. this play with The Lady from the Sea. 

4. What objections are there to the symbolistic play? Answer them. 

(b) From the optional reading: 

1. What differences are there in the symbolism of the Stranger and 
Manson? What other differences are there in the two plays? 

2. What two aspects of the Church appear respectively in the Bishop 
of Lancashire and the Vicar? Does the play in any way attack 
religion? 

3. Analyze and interpret the symbolic structure of Kennedy's play. 

LESSON XXXVII 

A. Required reading: Fitch's The Truth; Chandler: pp. 371-382. 

B. Optional: Kenyon's Kindling, Fitch's The City. 

The Truth (1906) is a near tragedy with a happy ending. There is a struc- 
tural warped quality in the soul of Becky, which, like her father's similar 
weakness, seems to make it congenitally impossible for her to be accurate. 
In Pinero's Iris and in Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way, where weak women 
also take the line of least resistance, the ruthless logic of the situation does 
not permit of a happy ending; and we may well ask, with Tom of Hubert 
Henry Davies' comedy, The Mollusc, where there is a supposed transforma- 

[87] 



tion of a selfish, lazy woman, "Were those miracles permanent cures? (Shakes 
his head.) We're never told! We're never told!" Yet with the exception of 
The City, this is one of Fitch's most serious plays. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

i. How does Becky's father's general weakness affect her character? 

2. Will she overcome her chronic tendency to prevaricate? Why (not)? 

3. Outline the plot. 

4. Why is the modern drama preponderantly prosaic? 

5. List the chief steps in the revolt against the Drama of Rhetoric. 

6. Define "dramatic poem," "closet drama," and "poetic drama." 

D. Questions for papers: 

{a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. the reformation of Becky with that of Nora in A DolVs House. 
Why do we feel sure that Nora has changed and are not so certain 
of Becky? 

2. Is Fitch's presentation of life accurate? 

3. How would Ibsen have treated this theme? D'Annunzio? Tchekhov? 
(b) From the optional reading: 

1. How does poverty operate as Fate in this play of Kenyon's? 

2. Is the mother's defense valid? Who is to blame for the conditions 
against which she fights? 

3. Cf. this play with Widowers' Houses. 

4. In The City does Fitch give us a representative picture of city 
life? 

5. Cf. The City with other plays which introduce scenes from city 
life, such as Major Barbara, Kindling, The Weavers. 

LESSON XXXVIII 

A. Required reading: Fitch's The Girl with the Green Eyes; Chandler: pp. 
382-397. 

B. Optional reading: Stephen Phillips' Herod. 

The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902), less consistent and not so well 
sustained as The Truth, and without the tragic undertone of The City, is 
more typical of his work. It is full of amusing irrelevancies, and it has at 
least one novel device independent of the integral action of the play, like the 
scene in the Vatican. As a study of congenital jealousy, however, it ranks 
with the study of congenital inaccuracy of statement given in The Truth, 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Outline the plot. 

2. Note all lines which do not seem strictly relevant to the plot. 

1881 



3. Sketch the character of the heroine. 

4. Why is Stephen Phillips historically important in a study of the 
drama? 

4. What are his best plays? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. What are the defects and excellencies of Phillips' plays? 

2. What are the chief differences between Phillips' interpretation of 
life and that of Shaw? of Pinero? 

3. Cf. the characters in The Truth and The Girl with the Green Eyes. 

4. Is Fitch a typical American dramatist? Why is his work inferior 
to a man like Galsworthy? 

(6) From the optional reading: 

1. How does Phillips create the atmosphere of this play? 

2. Is there any part of the play that is questionably appropriate for 
representation on a stage? 

3. Criticize Phillips as a poet, irrespective of any dramatic quality. 

LESSON XXXIX 

A. Required reading: Mackaye's The Scarecrow; Chandler: pp. 423-445. 

B. Optional: Peabody's The Piper. 

The Scarecrow (1910) is a "tragedy of the ludicrous," founded upon 
Hawthorne's story of Feathertop. There are many places in this play where 
the author's purely literary tendencies interfere with the dramatic develop- 
ment of the story. The play itself is a hybrid form of art, starting as a 
fantasy and^ending in the mood of true tragedy. This is due to the fact that 
Ravensbane develops the qualities of a true man, ceasing to be a mere 
automaton. His death arouses real regret and pity. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. Do you find any significant omissions from the Bibliographical Appen- 
dix I? 

2. Make a bibliographical appendix of American drama, using also the 
plays mentioned in the excursus on American drama. 

3. Why is the blacksmith shop an appropriate setting for the first act? 

4. Note any lines which you think reflect Mackaye's academic literary, 
rather than dramatic, tendencies. 

5. Why is the death of Ravensbane at the end not in keeping with the 
sub-title, "a tragedy of the ludicrous"? 

6. Who is Dickon? 

7. Do you think that the author intended us to feel the same sympathy 
for Ravensbane that we would for a human being? Why (not)? 

[89] 



D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

i. Do you think Mackaye deserves to be ranked along with Thomas, 
Fitch, and Moody as a representative American dramatist? Be 
specific. 

2. How has Mackaye modified the original story for his play? 

3. Could this play have been reduced to one act? If you think not, 
give your reasons; if you think it could, show how. 

(6) From the optional reading; 

1. How does Mrs. Marks (Josephine Preston Peabody) modify the 
original Browning version? Why does she do this? 

2. Are there supernatural elements in the play? 

3. Are there any passages conspicuously undramatic? 

4. What may be learned from the play of the condition of players in 
olden times? 

LESSON XL 

A. Required reading: Moody's The Great Divide; Chandler: pp. 446-479. 

B. Optional : Zangwill's The Melting Pot. 

The Great Divide (originally A Sabine Woman) (1906) is a psychologi- 
cal study of two American types, with a background of the East and the 
West as an important atmospheric element in the depiction of these two 
contrasted types. The first act reaches a strong climax, like that at the end 
of the first act of King Lear, with a consequent lessening of the dramatic 
tension. 

C. Questions for notebook: 

1. How does Moody enhance the contrast in the characters of Stephen 
and Ruth? 

2. What are the main steps in the development of Ruth's character? 

3. How is the happy ending prepared for? 

4. Note the contrast of mood in the first act. What poetic qualities, in 
contrast to dramatic qualities, do you notice here? 

5. What elements do you think made this play so popular? 

6. Can you suggest another way of grouping the material in the Biblio- 
graphical Appendix II? 

D. Questions for papers: 

(a) From the required reading: 

1. Cf. this happy ending with those of Fitch, Thomas, and others. 

2. How is the work of Moody as a poetic dramatist superior to that 
of Mackaye? 

[90] 



3- What other plays do you think should be compared with this as 
representations of distinctively American life? 

(6) From the optional reading: 

1. This play has been criticized as a plea for international mongrelism. 
Can you defend it? Does it voice sound American democracy? 

2. What seems to be the trouble with the last act? Does it seem to be 
logically developed? Does the elaborateness of the setting have 
anything to do with a certain ineffectiveness in its opening lines? 

3. Is Davenport over-drawn for the purpose of a theatrical contrast, 
or is he supposed to represent an actual type? 

4. This marriage between a Russian nobleman's daughter and an 
outcast Jew ends happily. The religious antagonisms in Ervine's 
Mixed Marriage did not thus dissolve, nor the racial antipathies in 
De Mille's Indian play, Strongheart, nor those of Sheldon's 
The Nigger. What reason is there for supposing this mixed marriage 
more asupicious? 

5. Cf. this strong setting-forth of the possibilities of a super-race in 
America with Shaw's theory of the superman, as developed in 
his Man and Superman. 



[Qi 



3AY 2 4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

027 211 294 



^-""i 



»»«» 2U 294 



• 



-rr^7~0F CONGRESS 

'Wf 

027 211 294 w 



